Chapter 1

Happy Birthday

The axe slid through the screaming troll's arm, and Thomas ducked to avoid its flailing left fist. Thomas leapt into the air, sliced neatly into the trolls throat, then landed with his back turned to the massive, dying beast.

He woke up. Was that a dream or the game? He jumped up and rubbed his right shoulder a little. Sliding on a pair of faded red boxer briefs, he caught himself in the bathroom mirror. Smirking to himself about his unabashed narcissism, he grabbed a t-shirt from his dresser and wriggled it onto his massive torso. It was a Smith's t-shirt, an old school band from way- way back in the day, but a band that Thomas loved, and the words on the t-shirt read: Louder than Bombs.

He stepped out onto the front of his studio apartment, coffee cup in hand, and leaned against the railing. The morning fog cast a haze over the pool and recreation area of the apartment complex. "Mouwf" He smiled, and leaned down to pet Panther, the local cat.

"How're you this morning Panther?"

"Mouwf." Replied Panther. Something was in its mouth.

"Whaddya got there?" Thomas delicately opened the cat's mouth and let the grayish shape fall onto the floor.

"Meow."

Thomas could not believe what he saw. It was a miniature head… With a face… A recognizable face that looked distinctly human like. Panther rubbed up against Thomas' leg.

"Meow."

He instinctively pet the cat and stared at the head, and realized that it was a mouse's head. The cat began to purr.

"You've been hunting again huh?"

No reply from Panther except a rising chorus of purrs. This bothered Thomas, had he played Death Warrant a little too much? That face looked like a pixie's face. He remembered them from the game a few sessions ago, when they went into the Fea Forest in search of a bounty. He stood up, drained the coffee, and went inside, leaving the door open in case Panther wanted to come in.

After putting on some jeans and checking his mailbox, the apartment manager, motioned to Thomas to come into her office. He went in. She beamed at him, lipstick staining a couple of teeth here and there.

"There he is! My big man!" she wrapped her arms around his huge arm and hugged it. The manager's name was Akiko. She was quick to point out that she wasn't Japanese but from the Philippines and she was even quicker to point out that it was her father who was really from the Philippines and that her mother named her after an old Japanese anime character.

This show of affection was not abnormal for Akiko, Thomas had come to expect it from her even, especially after an intense gaming session.

"You made it happen Thomas! Busted them for good, I'm so happy for you and Lamar, you guys did it! Highest score ever!"

Death Warrant.

It always went back to Death Warrant, the game of the century, the game that managed to eat up market share at such an alarming rate that it now practically held a monopoly on the multi-player Augmented Reality gaming economy. He smiled down at her as she talked about how amazing he was in the game. I am a gladiator, he thought. Was this what it felt like for the gladiators back in the Roman times? No, they were slaves.

"Thank you, Akiko, I--I appreciate it." his narcissism was now completely gone. He could be cocky as he looked at his well-defined muscles and bronze skin in the bathroom mirror, but now in public he felt as if he should curl up into a shell and disappear.

She let go of his arm, he felt her hands grip his bicep as she let go. She flushed a little "They need to name a street after you or something."

"Oh, no need for that."

"They should, you've put Torrance on the map again, I bet the Mayor'll do it."

"Trust me, I'm good. Thanks for the support though, I appreciate it." He left the office.

He rode his bike west on Sepulveda Blvd. He wanted to start his day off with a nice ride to the beach, perhaps he'd catch sight of some dolphins. He got about six blocks before a 57' Chevy Impala drove alongside him, the car was full of teenagers with eager faces. He turned into a parking lot and readied himself.

"Dude, that was awesome possum!"

"How you snuck the dagger in the cake--"

"You took that one troll's eye and used it as a projectile--"

For two minutes a complete and full on nerd fest on testosterone as the teens recounted their favorite moments of Thomas' game sessions. The driver of the car popped the trunk and out came the paraphernalia. These kids played Death Warrant also but were not professional like Thomas; still, they had some expensive gear, like the Gauntlet of Pain that a girl with pigtails and a mischievous look in her eye thrust before him. He took out his light pen and scrawled his moniker on the side of it.

Bloodstryke.

More people showed up, Thomas should have known, one of the kids would probably have a sub-audible headset on and their other friends a message. It took twenty minutes to sign all of the gear and to mutter thanks before they left him alone in the parking lot, leaning, wonderstruck, on his bike. Aegis corp. had a deal with him that if he autographed Death Warrant gear with his light pen, the wearer would receive a free power upgrade to their account. The kids were most likely on their way to their houses to plug in and kick some troll and ork ass.

He got on the bike again. He loved the game. Death Warrant, a game where you went after bounties on trolls and orks. Sometimes the bad guys would hire other creatures to protect their treasure, or do some type of dirty work for them, and that is why the pixie head bothered Thomas. However, it was a mouse's head, not a pixie head.

Twenty minutes later three fins slid languidly out of the Pacific Ocean and this stopped Thomas' train of thought. He visualized the underwater landscape that these dolphins called home and wished that he could swim with them. But that was a cliché right? Swimming with dolphins. He batted the idea from his thought process and grasped at the facts of what he had seen.

Panther brought him the mouse's head. Dropped it down. For a few seconds it looked like a pixie's head, and then turned into a mouse's head. His first thought was that his years of playing the game had messed with his brain in some fashion.

This could be entirely true. For years, doctors warned about the effects of AR gaming, but an equal amount of doctors swore that there would be no adverse side effects. They argued that the veterans coming back from the water wars in Finland assimilated back into society just fine, trained in AR, they fared much better than the vets that served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They showed studies that AR actually increased the synapse firing which allowed people to think faster, and allowed the brain to heal PTSD.

Hunger twisted his stomach. He walked over to the little beach side food shack and ordered three soy dogs and a gallon of water. He paid the bill and thanked the heavens that he made a good amount of money gaming because water was very expensive. He poured a small packet of creatine in the water jug and chugged half of it down in one go. It was cold and refreshing, some of the best he had tasted in a while. His head kept thinking however, running him through a series of thoughts that ran from the fact that he lived in the only non-corporate run city that owned beachfront property, to the fact that even if he wanted to take a break from gaming, Lamar, his Gamemaster, would not allow it.

He ate his dogs and loped over to his bike, now heading up Palos Verdes blvd to go to Dave's house. Mr. Dave Gibbs, gloom and doom himself. He knocked on the door of the condominium. Dave answered quickly with a conspiratorial look over Thomas' shoulder. He was much shorter than Thomas and thinner as well. He still sported a decent muscle tone for someone who did not exercise much and he kept himself and his environment impeccably clean. Thomas felt a little bad that he got a little sand on Thomas' floor as he took his sneakers off.

"I noticed your little parking lot fan festival this morning." This had not surprised Thomas in the least. Between the amount of cameras and drones Dave had stationed around Torrance and Palos Verdes there wasn't much that went on without Dave knowing. The fact that Thomas did not find this strange was the fact that Thomas was obsessively attracted to Dave. To hear that Dave watched him this morning gave him a slight rush of energy.

"Yeah, you know the fans like their upgrades."

"The upgrades do help your popularity levels but the fact is they like you too. You're a very likable guy."

"You think so? I mean, I feel so bland, I don't give too much to people."

"I think that's exactly why they like you. You're not asking them for anything, you're not threatening to take anything away from them. Look at you, you are not the average person. Think about mythology and how it was created there's a high chance that it was created by people like them, who were inspired by someone special."

Thomas saw something in Dave's eye, something he liked, a spark in his eye that was different from the usually sardonic expression that graced his handsome face.

Dave continued. "Of course, these kids, they don't actually think as the bards of the past did, it's merely an instinct of their subconscious. A remnant of the way we used to be."

Dave waved his hand, as if dissipating that very idea from existence like smoke. "Want some wine?"

"Dave, it's 11AM."

"You're a funny one." He waltzed to the bar next to his living room and took out two finely stemmed glasses and a decanter. "It's five o'clock somewhere."

Thomas had already surrendered to the idea. Dave poured the inky contents of the bottle into a decanter, using a strip of cheesecloth to catch the sediments from the wine.

"That's an old bottle."

"Yeah."

"Where's it from?"

"France, 1923, Bordeaux."

"Wow."

The implications of the history alone stopped Thomas' train of thought. He knew Dave was wealthy, but the weight of what Dave could acquire was remarkable. Dave handed him a wine glass. "C'mon, I want to show you something."

They walked down some wooden stairs into a den. Thomas took a long sip of the wine, he was impressed, it tasted earthy with dark berry tones, and he enjoyed the rough finish.

The room lit up with floating displays. On them lay a map of Torrance and parts of the adjacent cities bustling with the life of real time.

"Ground control to Major Tom." Dave said to no one in particular, almost as if it was the unveiling of a grand accomplishment.

Now oriented, Thomas noticed all of the landmarks and places that made Torrance special to him. Rocket ship Park, Marble estates, Miranda's Starbucks, the UFC gym, Zamperini field, everything.

Thomas absently drained his wine glass. He felt the rush of alcohol in his cheeks, wondering if Dave would see his blushed cheeks in the semi-darkness they now stood. Dave refilled his glass. "I don't think I should have too much." Thomas said weakly.

"C,mon, you're a big guy and you ride a bike. Perfect combination, plus I can tell you like it, and you're simply trying to observe some basic type of etiquette, adorable." The wine poured higher now.

"This is my masterpiece, an independently run surveillance grid on one of the last unincorporated territories that actually matter. I beat all of the others to it. Its mine, sign sealed and delivered!" Dave drained his wine and poured more for himself with a different energy than Thomas had ever seen in him.

Dave's eyes watered slightly."Today's my birthday. I made thirty, I pulled it off, and I beat all of them."

It was inevitable at this point, Dave sat down the decanter and his wine glass on a table and approached Thomas with something else than bragging in mind. Thomas did not mind, it was in the making, he was not there because he thought surveillance drones were sexy. No, he thought Dave was sexy, and to his own personal shame, he enjoyed the fact that Dave never left his place.

The first kiss was pensive, almost like a test, the second came harder, and the rest that followed took place on the floor of the den to the lights of dozens of floating displays.

As they made love Thomas noticed that the displays did not stay stagnant, they undulated and changed into a vista above Torrance and the PV peninsula, the images surrounded them until Thomas and Dave left the den, they were soaring over the city, making love in the air as warm air currents caressed their bodies.

It was just as an immersive experience as playing Death Warrant, but instead of wading through the blood of orks and trolls he was making love, real love with a real person, and everything except him and his new lover ceased to exist.