Svetlana the Tumultuous, Lana to her friends, "Sveaty" to her detractors, heaved the head of her morningstar at a charging goblin. The big weapon smacked into its chest and pushed the goblin into his nearby mate, killing the momentum of the second goblin and just plain killing the first.

She fake-lurched toward the other goblins and they scattered. All but one, who whapped his stick-club against a sorry-looking wooden buckler. Whack. Whack. Whack. His snarling face seemed suddenly to grow distant, the sound of his shield-display softer: clack, clack, clack...

Clay awoke with a snort. She looked down at the needles and yarn in her hands. "Sleep-knitting again," she said. She looked at the mess she'd made of the last bit. "Bugger," she said. This was the third dream this week that seemed drawn from D&D, which she hadn't played for decades.

Vonzell came into the room. Clay gave a smile as her caregiver resolved from distant-blurry to in-focus. Her eyes fell so quickly out of adjustment these days it was hardly worth trying to keep up.

Her hand unit bipped. She looked at the display and saw a message had come to her through the Turing Organization; not many knew the code to directly contact her that way. She played the audio.

A small, weak voice said, "Granny Clay? Help..."

She had two great-nephews and one great-niece. The voice was faint enough, and her hearing bad enough, that it could have been any of the three. She decided to call Lydia, her younger sister's eldest. She wasn't any more family-oriented than the other two, but could be counted on to be dutiful, at least.

"Lydia? It's Aunt Clay. I was just calling to see how you were getting on."

"Oh, Aunt Clay! I meant to tell you that Raf is out of hospital."

Had she known Raf was in the hospital? Did she forget? "I see. Is he well?"

"His leg's going to require a lot of rehabilitation. Fortunately, the company responsible is picking up the tab for that, just like the hospital bill. Well, sort of. They've offered him a job."

"That's good," Clay said.

"Well, pretty much. You know in-depth computing isn't really his thing..." Lydia trailed off.

Clay knew. Oh, how she knew. A "journalist," this one styled himself. Her sister Carol's grandkids hadn't inherited even a tiny bit of her technical aptitude. Or her curiosity. Perhaps those traits decided to skip another generation.

"The thing is," Lydia said, "they've got him doing something inside some kind of, I guess it sounds like a game? He sounds a little out of his element. I thought, if there was any way you could talk to him, maybe give him some pointers...?"

Ah. "Pointers. For a game." Clay muted, coughed, waved away Vonzell's proferred tissue. "Yes. I mean, I can talk to him, give him a general idea of what he can study on his own, but I doubt I'd know any specifics." Her throat still scratched. It clipped her words, made her sound as brusque as Lydia doubtless expected her to be.

"I'd appreciate it so much, Aunt Clay. Can I put him in touch with you?"

"Of course, of course. Lydia, I have medications coming. I have to go." She disconnected, coughed, coughed again longer, and this time took the tissue from Vonzell.

"Vonzell."

"Yes, Miss Clay?"

"Did I know Rafael was in the hospital?"

"Not that I know, Miss Clay."

"God dammit! Why does no one tell me these things?"

Vonzell wisely remained silent and went to put together the medications that weren't due for another couple of hours.

Clay phoned her two other nieces. Their respective kids lived in town, too, and both were healthy and accounted for. Had the call been a prank? She was troubled by it, but put it out of her mind until she had more data to go on.

Her hand unit bipped again. "Oh Christ, what now?" She looked at the screen and saw she had a package about to be delivered. She asked Vonzell to retrieve it.

Moments later she had a plain white box before her. The sender was "Anabasis," and they had a local address. She opened it and lifted out the top foam block. There was a combination visor-and-earphones headset. There was also a note.

"It's not gold and pearls, but it'll open up a magic kingdom. -X."

She touched the query spot on her handheld. "Anabasis," she said. She looked at the results: the local company, and an ancient Greek work written by a man named Xenophon.

Clay shook her head. "God damn it." Xenophon Kaminides was now local to her, operating a company, and calling back to one of his more ludicrous empty promises from their time together. "I'll make you a princess of your own kingdom," he had said, "with a tiara of gold and pearls."

She looked at the cheap plastic piece of crap in the box. "Typical X," she said. Still, she took off her glasses--the visor wouldn't fit over them--and activated the headset.

"Welcome to EVE OME," said the letters that bloomed in her vision. "Bloody..." she said. Macular degeneration was hell, and without the Dobelle glasses to feed her what was blurred in the middle of her field of vision, she had to roll her eyeballs around to assemble a complete picture. "EVERHOME," it said.

The words swept up as her point of view began a fall through a starfield, then a cloud-smudged, pinkening sunset sky, then down through a forest of heavy-canopied trees. She "landed" on the ground to see--herself.

Or something like herself: a neutral person-template, much her size and features. Surely, she thought, games weren't making default characters into frail old women. She thought the game could be taking biometric info from publicly available sources and aggregating it, then waved the thought away as irrelevant for now.

A ball of light appeared in the side of her vision. She was grateful not to have to feel she was twisting her eyes around to see it.

"Welcome, new player!" it said. "Are you--?" Here her name, Claybelle Pritchard, appeared on the screen. An ethereal "Yes" and "No" appeared in front of her.

"Oh, piss," she said, rummaging around in the box she'd set at her feet.

"You can say 'yes' or 'no'," the ball of light said.

"Yes!" Clay said. She pulled at the foam in the box; part of it gave way and she could feel a smooth bit of fabric inside. She grabbed at it and put the control glove on over her right hand.

"Excellent," the ball of light said. "Of course, you may wish to give your alter ego in Everhome a different name. You may call me Spryt, and you can ask me questions anytime. I'll be right--" the ball swooshed past the side of her vision; its voice now came from over her left shoulder, "--here."

It had been some time since she'd played one of the online computer games, but she remembered more as she spent time logged in. There was not so much a trill of excitment as a muted tingle buried under X's pushing this game rig onto her. She went through the initial steps of character creation in a businesslike fashion, creating a plain human sort of character that appeared not terribly different from herself. When the game urged her to choose a character type, she pondered for a moment, then chose "warrior." A small grin creased her face as she entered the character's name: Svetlana.

"If you are happy with your choices, let us begin your adventure!" Spryt said. The glade in which the character had stood dissolved, fading into a dark tunnel that swept the newly minted Svetlana along until a number of small, dim lights rushed toward her. When she stopped, Clay was looking through Svetlana's eyes, and when they adjusted to the low light, she could see she stood in a low-ceilinged tavern.

"Welcome to the Dog and Pony," the publican behind the bar said. "I see you're new in town. Well, we can set you on your feet, sell you food and drink, and even provide you with a room upstairs. At the Dog and Pony, everything is just right." The barkeep frowned slightly, "Well, almost everything."

Clay shook her head and said aloud, "Let me guess: you have rats in your cellar."

"That's right!" the bartender said. Clay was taken aback: the ability of non-player characters to interact used to be much more limited than this. She might contact X in spite of herself just to see what sort of software processes he'd used in achieving this.

She assured the bartender that she'd clear his cellar of rats. She'd take care of that later; the process of having to glance all around her just to see what was right in front of Svetlana's eyes was wearing at her patience.

"Are you a warrior? You look like a warrior." The small voice came from around Svetlana's hip.Clay tilted her head down to see a girl of about nine, "My cat got out, and might be in trouble. I'm worried he'll get caught by a goblin. Can you help me?"

Clay was about to respond when the girl's speech skipped. "--Help me?" she asked again.

"--Help me, Granny Clay?"