He was home again! His place looked intact at least. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, and his TV was even on, just like he’d left it. He hated coming home to a silent house.

“Finally,” he muttered, and wandered into the kitchen to grab a snack.

As he opened the fridge he realized he was still looking around carefully, watching out for potential threats. He took a few deep breaths and tried to leave the game behind.

“Messages,” he said.

As expected there was nothing much. A bank update, a few circulars from the Disability group. And one folder tagged “Confidential” from Axiom Online.

I can guess what that is.

He unlocked it and sure enough, it was his copy of the agreement he’d signed.

Two hundred pages?

It seemed like there was a lot of material there that he’d neglected to scan through.

That’s got to be some kind of violation. I can’t sign my life away with five minutes of prep time.

It obviously needed careful reading. Then maybe some serious thinking and searching about legal support options.

But when he flopped down on the couch, he finally noticed one brand new thing. There was a wall display near the TV, and it hadn’t been there when he left.

LOGOUT ALLOWANCE: 1 HOUR 54 MINUTES REMAINING

“Oh go to hell!” he said to the room in general.

They’d added this to his home. How had they even managed to get access rights to his place? This was beyond the pale.

Screw this.

He flicked up his interface and looked at the email screen. Who did he even know in the real world anymore to talk to?

His dad had a brother - his uncle, he supposed - living in the east… Maryland? He wasn’t sure. He might have gone to the service, but Peter was still in induced coma when that all happened. He certainly hadn’t tried to get in contact. One of his mom’s friends had sent some flowery card, but it wasn’t anything that invited him to keep in touch.

He was frankly worried about trying to talk to Ken the therapist about it.

They might be able to withdraw him from whatever was going on, but he was wary about giving them the notion that he couldn’t be trusted on his own online. Bad things might be down that path.

Which didn’t leave a lot of options.

He brought up LifeNull and went to the Dead Earth forum.

1 PRIVATE MESSAGE

That’s it?

He hadn't been gone that long, but his storefront must have been removed by now. It would have been nice if a few people had checked in.

The message was from FiltyOldBill, no surprise. They'd always been friendly. He ran an armor place specializing in new player gear, so there was some overlap in their clientele. But he'd been around almost as long as Peter and was online way more than someone with a job could manage. It was bad form to probe to closely into people's real lives, but it seemed like a given that his name had some truth to it. He had to be a retiree.

Hey MC - what the hell? You just up and cancelled your subscription without any warning? Was the latest batch actually that bad?

I guess it’s no surprise to you that your space is already taken. I've seen the new owner coming and going and I have a bad feeling. He's got a sign template up with way too much sparkly pink in it. This can't be good.

Let me know what’s going on, okay? Here’s a VCX link if you feel like meeting up.

An actual offer to meet up outside of the game. That was a first from Bill.

Normally he might have felt a little weird about it, but here and now it seemed like a lifeline.

The reply command just bleeped at him.

“Seriously?” he said.

There was a knock at his door.

Gee, I wonder who that could be?

He sighed and got up.

“Peter,” Weller said, sitting in the big armchair next to the TV. “First of all I want to apologize for the way we threw you into things there. I’m sure it was upsetting.”

Peter nodded.

“It was, Paul. What was that about?”

Weller waved it away.

“Well first of all, we were always going to do a fairly minimal intro. It’s part of the game system - you’re in hardcore mode. This is supposed to be a real challenge. Not much help, and you have to figure it out on your own.”

“You could have said that much.”

“I know, I know. But someone was talking in my ear and I ended up needing to go right away. I’m really sorry about that, but from what I’ve seen you’ve been doing great. You established a clan within the first few hours! That’s impressive from a starting point of zero.”

“The other players were slower?”

“Oh definitely. Definitely. I had a feeling you’d take to this like a fish to water.”

"Have you been watching?"

"I wish I had time for that these days. Things have been hectic. But I got a quick rundown of your first few hours."

Weller seemed distracted.

“Okay,” he said, “But the thing I really needed to talk to you about was the medical provisions in your agreement.”

Medical?

“What about it?” Peter said.

“Holy Family seemed like a fine place,” Weller said. “But they’re packed to the gills with high-needs patients and they’re understaffed. I’m sure they’ve been doing the best they could for you, but frankly the physician we had on site wasn’t happy with your condition.”

“What do you mean?” Peter said. This was the last thing he was expecting to talk to Weller about.

“When was the last time you went purely physical? Checked in on your body?”

Peter shrugged.

“It's been a while. There’s not much reason to. It’s uncomfortable and there’s nothing to see or do. “

Weller nodded.

“So you’re just taking it on faith that they’ve been doing all the required physio to keep you in shape?”

“I guess…”

It had never even occurred to him to question it. That was their job, after all.

“Well, I won’t criticize their work. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. But Dr. Kumar was very concerned with your condition. He’s sent some samples in to the lab, but he suspects you’re suffering from some kind of low-key systemic infection. Possibly it started in your lungs, but one way or another he felt you were in rough shape when they showed up.”

“Oh,” Peter said. “So am I… did they put me on antibiotics or something?”

“Of course! Not to worry. You see, one of the provisions of our agreement was that we could assume medical responsibility for you if we thought it was warranted. Doctor Kumar was all over that. You should see the man when he’s angry, it’s quite a sight.”

Something inside of Peter was waving madly for his attention.

They can assume medical responsibility for me? Axiom can?

Weller seemed to read the look on Peter’s face.

“Look, don’t worry, okay? The whole point is to keep you healthy. That’s what’s going on here. Honestly it’s not surprising that you weren’t doing well. Patients in your condition, apparently it’s pretty common to have issues like this.”

“I… Okay, but what does that mean, assume responsibility for me? I still have final say on things, yes?”

Weller’s face was all worry.

“I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea - yes, of course you do! As soon as the lab results come back you should have a meeting with Dr. Kumar. We’ll set that up right away, regardless of where you are on the logout cycle.”

Suddenly everything about the game came flooding back to Peter’s mind.

“Look, I have a lot of questions about everything, but number one is the logout timer. I didn’t realize I was slave labor.”

Weller shook his head.

“You’re not slave labor, Peter. This is part of the production cycle. I promise you, you’re not the only one who’s putting in long hours right now.”

“Really? You give everyone two hours per day off?”

Weller rolled his eyes.

“We’re not that bad. You’re on the same break timing as anyone else. Six hours on, two hours off, twice, that’s 16 hours total, followed by up to eight hours off to sleep. Twelve hour days is actually pretty generous compared to some of our devs, believe me.”

“Seven days per week?”

Weller grinned.

“Well, one of the reasons we approached you was because that was already your schedule. We can see your logs Peter. In the past two years you’ve taken a total of ten days entirely offline from the game.”

They’ve kind of got me there.

“When I take a break is my choice, nobody else’s.”

“Fair enough, but like I said we’re in crunch time right now. The player input is essential to our work. If you really need to take a day off, just send me a message. We’ll arrange it.”

Peter felt like Weller was leading the conversation down a path that he’d already planned out. He needed to move carefully, and keep an eye out for important items that he was being talked away from. Axiom had already demonstrated that they would put Peter into situations without essential information. He had to make sure he asked Weller about everything.

I need to throw him off balance.

“I met a Hunter ghoul named John. He said he was a player, and that Axiom had manipulated his memories. Frankly he seemed kind of nuts.”

Weller nodded.

“He’s not entirely wrong.”

He sighed and gave Peter a long look.

“We’re working on a lot of different projects. That Lone Hunter is one of them. I can’t say a lot about it, but he’s an AI. Just a very advanced one. A considerable part of his mind is constructed from John Brenner, one of our devs.”

“It didn’t seem like an NPC to me,” Peter said. “And it seemed pretty mad at Axiom.”

Weller snorted.

“That’s John all over, for sure. He’s a natural complainer.”

“It seemed like a person, not an AI.”

“Well that’s the whole point. But I agree with you that it’s probably whatever the AI equivalent of insane is. If it was up to me I’d have had the thing removed ages ago.”

“Plus you can read my mind, yeah? The game pulled out the ghoul names from what I was thinking.”

Weller grinned.

“Is that cool or what? It’s a core component of the new DMAI iteration. The bidirectional bandwidth on your gear is like an order of magnitude better. We can pull out enough data to react to the player in ways that were never possible before.”

“You can read my mind. How much privacy can I expect?”

Weller burst out laughing.

“Believe it or not we’re pretty busy. I guarantee you that nobody is trying to listen in on your every thought.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Maybe with enough time and effort, but the DMAI is focused on game-specific interactions. Plus it’s not perfect. If your visual cortex is seeing a ghoul and there’s a clear enough subvocalization of a name, it can pick up the connection, yeah. But you’re going to see some cases where it gets it wrong, too.”

Well how about that? I was worried about nothing at all.

So why am I still feeling like there’s something I’m missing?

He was being managed. He was sure of it. Shrieker’s warning, whether it came from an AI or not, was still in the back of his mind.

Time to change tracks again.

It was one way to try to throw Weller off of any plans he had for the conversation. Peter couldn’t think of a better one at the moment.

“My communications are blocked, Paul. Also” - he pointed to the wall display - “who gave you admin permissions for my home? I don’t remember granting you any control over my life outside of the game.”

Weller seemed nonplussed.

“The communications thing is temporary. I just wanted a chance to have this talk with you first, so that you understood what was happening here. I can see how it might be misinterpreted, believe me.”

“What do you think I need to understand before you’ll let me use my home as if it was my own?”

Weller sighed again and nodded at the wall display.

“We can do that because you’re on our server now. Not the one at Holy Family.”

“Really. Why?”

The amount of control Axiom had taken over his life just kept getting bigger.

“Doctor Kumar regards you as his patient now. This was his call, not mine. He had you transferred. It’s an upgrade relative to Holy Family, believe me. But it’s on a network backbone for one of our infrastructure subsidiaries, so we can kill two birds with one stone. Lower network latency is a good thing, no?”

Peter sat back on the couch and stared at Weller for a few moments.

“In the space of what? Six or seven hours? You’ve taken over my whole life.”

Weller frowned.

“We signed you on as a contractor, but since you’re a liability from a medical standpoint we exercised our option, on a physician’s recommendation, to move you to a much better facility. Please tell me what part of that was a shitty move on our part.”

Peter sighed. He couldn’t come up with a good response. Not now anyway. On the face of it Weller’s point made sense. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. That something was missing.

“So where am I?”

Weller waved that away, too.

“It’s all in your system, you don’t need my help with that. Plus your communications are unblocked now.”

“Thank you.”

Weller gave him a serious look.

“Just remember the NDA please. If you start spouting off about what you’re doing, we will be within our rights to terminate the agreement.”

Peter nodded.

Weller hesitated, then said, “Let’s not go there, okay Peter? I’m rooting for you. You’ll do some good work for us, and in the end we’ll have you fixed up in Shenzhen. Everybody’s happy.”

“So what is it exactly that I’m supposed to be doing? Is there a manual, a term sheet? Anything? I’m in the dark here.”

“Yup. That’s the way we like it.”

Peter’s expression seemed to have some effect on Weller.

“Like I said, this is a more challenging mode. The intent is to throw the player in with a minimum of help. It’s a more visceral experience, with more uncertainty and fear. Hopefully, anyway. Watching a few expert-level players bash their way around and break things is important.”

“What’s the timeline for release?”

“When it’s done? Sorry, can’t resist cliches. Probably a year, that's the current plan. Depends on how things go.”

“Can I submit bug reports?”

“I guess so. If you feel it’s important. Just message me.”

“Okay, bug number one. The somatics are just stupid. The pain level is too high. You can consider that a formal complaint. You need to drop it down a lot. A ghoul stabbed me in the eye and it was… awful.”

Weller nodded.

“Noted. But can I suggest we give it a couple of days? You might have been more sensitive owing to your real world somatics. The infection.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Try not to get stabbed in the eye again, I guess. Really though if stays a problem, message me and I’ll have someone on it.”

“Oh, right. Bug number two. I can only have one support request active.”

“That’s a feature. It’s all part of the experience. Not so much hand holding.”

“Even for a beta?”

“Calling it a beta is optimistic at this point, but yes. We want you guys lean and hungry and a bit frustrated. Anyway we don’t ignore them. We’ll see it.”

He stood up and looked out the window.

“I don’t want to take up all your break time Peter. You deserve some rest.”

Peter felt a moment of panic. Once Weller left there was no telling how long it would be until someone would actually answer his questions again.

But before he could say anything Weller held up his hand.

“But the appointment with Dr. Kumar is top priority. We’ll notify you for a logout the moment that’s set up, and I won’t delay in passing along anything that he wants you to know before then, okay?”

Once Weller was gone, Peter tried to relax. He flicked through channels and feeds looking for something interesting, but he couldn’t stay focused. So he gave up and went outside.

Sitting in the sunlight in a safe place is going to be a luxury for a while. I guess I should lap it up. Nothing wants to kill me here.

He realized he was starting to doze, so before he drifted off he put together a quick message to FilthyOldBill.

Hey Bill sorry about that. It’s complicated. Can we meet tomorrow? I think I should be available around either noon or 7PM CST, so let me know. VCX is fine, I'll show up.

He couldn’t actually tell Bill anything, but all the same he didn’t want to lose touch with one of his only current IRL contacts that wasn’t also capable of listening in on his thoughts or apparently deciding to move his body without so much as consulting him.

He needed to work on crafting an emergency escape button, just in case.

Keeping a line open to Ken the Therapist was probably smart too. Plus he didn't like the idea of just being whisked away with nobody knowing where he went.

Hi Ken I apologize for my sudden departure! An opportunity came up and I decided to take it. Are you still my therapist at this point? If not who is? Someone at

He flicked through a few pages to find his new home.

Parkland Care?

He sent it off and sat back, satisfied.

There we go. Two lines of communication to the outside world established.

It made him feel slightly less kidnapped.

There was one more thing he could do. Should do, really. He brought up the base-level VRMI screen and stared at the button.

It can probably wait. Not like going physical will tell me much at this point.

He waved it away again and sat down on the couch, planning to start paging through the Axiom agreement, but three pages in he was fast asleep. Axiom woke him up with a soft but insistent bell to tell him his time was up.

No snooze button for this, I guess.

Peter logged back in to the sound of ghouls yelling from downstairs.

“You guys get ready to fight if wall fall down!”

That was KG, no doubt about it.

There was a loud boom, and he heard Barbie’s voice.

“Need help over here!”

Honestly, I can’t leave you people alone for a couple of hours.

He jumped up and scrambled quickly down the stairs. All of the ghouls were manning the wall, which was already looking damaged, and it shuddered as something crashed against it.