Yup, there was no doubt about it: I was spending more time on my back than a hooker with a Black Friday sale, and I was feeling just as worn out.

By the time consciousness decided to rejoin me, I was sprawled out in a room with no doors. It was about six feet squared, a sparse stone cell with little more than a slab for a bed, a hole in the floor for a toilet, and a battered metallic water bowl that I assumed must be for drinking from. The walls were devoid of doors or decoration, and seem to stretch infinitely into the space above me. The grim cell’s light was cast from a solitary orb, as it hovered overhead without making a sound. One thing was certain: I wasn’t going to be escaping this place in a hurry. Gods know how they even got me in here.

I tried to reach into my inventory, but to my surprise, it was locked, a red error message taking the place of the usual menu screen. Was this a puzzle, I wondered? A sub-game of some kind? Were they expecting me to free myself? Perhaps I was missing some obvious clue as to my escape, all because I lacked the perception to see the loose brick in the wall, or the password etched into the shadowy corners of the cell. Of course, it was possible that such thoughts were the actual problem. Yes, this had been a game, once upon a time. But since those days, it had evolved into something much more sadistic. For all I knew, my only method of escape was to starve to death and respawn back in my cell.

That didn’t bear thinking about, so I resolved to search for clues. Hell, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

The search brought little success. After an hour or so spent manually inspecting every inch of my cell, I gave up, sat myself down on the cold hard bed, and reached for the bowl of water. I took the meagre concession to comfort to my lips, and drank, taking consolation in the fact that it hadn’t turned out to be a piss-bowl after all. Then I turned my attention to my status screens.

While my inventory remained locked, my information was still available to read, and I was relieved when I got around to checking my HP. Perhaps solitary had its advantages after all. My energy was finally increasing again, because (just for a change) there was no one around to forcefully knock it back out of me. I gave thanks for that small mercy.

Another hour or so passed. An hour in which I could do little else but contemplate everything that had happened to me so far. I spent some time attempting to figure out my worker-class, oddly knowledgeable cellmate, but failed to reach a conclusion. Giving up on that, I studied my gains from the duel, cursing my lost opportunity to level up when the guards stole the win away from us. That, in turn, led me to think about S’haruk. I was feeling guilty about her death. True, she’d been a grade-A bitch to me, back when we’d first met. But she’d had my back when it counted, which was more than I could say for that coward Samusk. I recalled the way she’d died, and a shiver ran through my avatar. I wouldn’t wish that end on my worst enemy, let alone a sort-of frenemy. I only hoped that when she returned, she wouldn’t be holding a grudge against me.

I was distracted from this concern when suddenly, the ball of energy that danced overhead began to crackle.

A faulty light-fitting. That’s all I fucking need. If a stray spark of magic turns me into a fucking goblin, that’s going to sum my day right up.

It was not a random glitch, however. Energy was now sparking in all directions, the embers dancing across the floor as they cooled and fell dormant. As I scrambled into the corner of the cell there was a flash of light from above me. And when my eyes finally readjusted, I was shocked to learn that I was no longer alone in my cell.

A short figure was stood before me, but it wasn’t Samusk. Hell, it wasn’t even a dwarf. He was much too clean-shaven for that role, and stereotypes had to be maintained, after all. No, this individual was dressed in well-cut robes of expensive looking silk. His hair was thin and his face weary, wrinkled and adorned in a few day’s growth of salt and pepper stubble.

“Alright,” he began, “who do we have here, then?”

With that statement he reached out a tiny hand, willing a panel into existence as if reaching into his own inventory. But this screen was different from any that I had seen before. This was no list of items, waiting to be selected. This was a list of players. I made to speak but he cut me off, pinching his fingers and somehow forcing my mouth to seal itself tightly shut in the process. I quickly noted that whoever he was, he had power. Having silenced me, he tutted to himself and continued to read.

“All right,” he finally declared, releasing his hold on my lips. “Prisoner username Shade. I would assume you’re a little confused as to what’s going on, so I’ll try to make this straightforward enough for even an inferior artificial AI like yourself to comprehend.”

Artificial AI? That was what Siriso called me, back at his hut. And I supposed I was, but what did that make him? It occurred to me what I was dealing with. And to be honest, I preferred the sexy elf.

“You’re another help file, aren’t you?” I blurted out. I left the question at that, deciding that it was probably better if I kept my sexy elf fetish to myself.

“I’m much more than that, you insolent sprite,” he rebuked, swiping the display away. “Before this entire server went to hell, I was its Gamesmaster. But these days… they call me the mighty Dungeon Warden.”

His flat tone did not sound particularly mighty. I’d even go so far as to say that he sounded bored.

“What happened to S’haruk? I demanded, figuring that if anyone knew, it was the ‘mighty’ warden. “Is she okay?”

The little man looked genuinely taken aback by my tone, and possibly my lack of awe over his proclamation. He sighed, reached into his robe and pulled out something that looked very much like a cigar.

“Your little fight buddy?” he eventually replied, igniting the cigar with a click of his fingers. “Dumb bitch tried to pick a fight with a demon, from what I heard. She’ll probably respawn in a day or two. I know much of this world, but the intricacies of the demonic digestive system is not a subject I would care to research…”

Ewwww. That’s just gross. Now I really wanted to change the subject.

“Be thankful that I spared you that delay after your own venture into the wrong side of the food chain,” he continued, stopping to draw on his stogie. “You were supposed to appear next to the spawning pyre. Yet somehow, you showed up in the middle of a fucking boss raid. Care to explain to me why that was?”

“You mean that wasn’t supposed to happen?” I gasped.

The Dungeon Warden studied me as if burrowing past my skin and into my very soul. Hell, for all I knew that was exactly what he was doing. Who was to say that my thoughts weren’t a private server that the creepy little bastard already knew the password to. On that point, I made a mental note not to refer to him as the ‘creepy little bastard’ again.

An uncomfortable moment silently passed between us. If the exasperated gasp of air that eventually left his avatar was anything to go by, then whatever he had been looking for, he hadn’t found it.

“So, you control the game, then?” I enquired, nervously.

“Word of advice,” he began, pausing to exhale the thick smoke of his cigar. It had an odd luminosity that suggested whatever was in there, it wasn’t tobacco. “…don’t call it a game. You’ll just piss folks off. Once you spend a few days in this shithole, you’ll come to understand that it’s no game. Most games are fair, for a start.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about me,” I assured him, “I intend to keep my head down and do my time. Trust me, I’ll do whatever it takes to earn parole and make my way to the surface.” I flashed him my best smile. Admittedly, my attempt to look like a model prisoner may have been more effective if I wasn’t badly bruised and sitting in solitary confinement at the time.

“Damn, if there was a naivety stat, you’d be star player, son,” replied the Dungeon Warden, shaking his head.

“Excuse me?”

“In case you didn’t notice when the big hairy fuck was standing on your head earlier… and yeah, I saw that, too… trouble has a habit of finding folk in this place, regardless of their intentions. As for parole, do you realize how long that will take? Even if you do keep ascending and eventually earn your ‘reincarnation’, you’ll be too damn old to celebrate. Your muscles will have wasted away, and your dick will be too limp to party with. Not to mention the fact that the greedy fucks running this server will have raided your savings to pay for your ‘avatar maintenance.’”

“My body can’t age,” I protested, It’s ash. When I do get out, Atonement Incorporated will have to clone me a new one.”

How the hell could the ‘mighty’ one not know this?

“You honestly think they’re going to go to all that expense for you?” he scoffed. “They promised you a clone, yeah, but they didn’t promise you a freshly-grown personalized meat-suit. They’ll stuff you in some unclaimed slab of meat that’s been wasting away in a status tube somewhere, then consider their obligations covered.”

My stomach tightened. Surely he was lying. He had to be. Either way, it was a concern for waaay down the line. I had much more immediate concerns.

“Why can’t I get into my inventory?”

“Because I don’t want you stabbing yourself in the head to get back to your cushy cell, that’s why.”

“Cushy? I’d hardly go that far. Anyway, what have I done to afford a private audience with the great and powerful Dungeon Warden? I can’t imagine cafeteria fights are that out of the ordinary.”

“That’s mighty Dungeon Warden to you, asshole. And don’t go thinking you’re anything special, neither.” He stopped to blow a series of smoke rings into the space between us. Then he blew an arrow through the largest one, just to show off. “I have a one-to-one with every new login, sooner or later. Helps me to suss out who the potential troublemakers are going to be.”

“So, who better to start with than the noob who found his way into a boss chamber within two minutes of arriving, am I right?”

“Brains and brawn, eh? You got it in one, boy,” he replied with a wink, before taking another draw on his cigar.

“So, what happens next, then? Are you going to hand me some dumb-ass quest in exchange for my freedom?”

The dungeon Warden rolled his eyes, before walking over to join me. He perched himself on the corner of the hard slab masquerading as a bed, pointing the cigar directly at my face.

“For fuck’s sake boy, I told you already. Stop treating this place like a damn game. Do you honestly think I’m programmed to help you get out of here? I wouldn’t give two shits if you ended up stuck here for the rest of your artificial life, if not for the amount of space you over-privileged bundles of personaware take up on my damned server.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“It doesn’t have to be, boy. If this was a game, there’d be a bunch of whining paying customers to pander to. But nowadays, I only have one master to please, and that’s the CEO of Atonement Incorporated. And she seems to think that the best place to toss every scrap of abandonware is my fucking dungeon. Trust me, if I had my way, I’d just release the lot of you into the slums above us, and make you their problem, not mine.”

Slums? You have to be kidding me, that’s our next goal? This just keeps getting better and better.

“So if you hate us so much, why are you still here, then? Did you decide to keep me company just to tell me that I’m on my own? That seems a little… contrary.”

“Professional courtesy,” he replied, blowing another smoke ring, this time directly into my face. “The third-party developer Atonement Incorporated hired to re-purpose this dump after they bought the game over did a seriously sloppy job. They cut every corner possible to bring the job in under budget. Removing my pre-programmed need to have an introductory meeting with every single new login was deemed an unnecessary waste of manhours, it would seem. So, server save me, I have to do this. Not that I don’t mind the opportunity to get away from that bastard core for a few minutes, admittedly. Believe me, we won’t be meeting like this again. So, with that in mind, I’d recommend that you take full advantage.”

“Take advantage how, exactly?”

“Cloud above, do I have to spell it out for you? Ask me a fucking question. You only get one though, so make it count.”

“Anything?”

“Provided it doesn’t require me to access the company’s private data, then yeah. So long as you swear to keep the answer to yourself, you can ask me whatever the hell you want.”

I thought about this for a moment. I had a hundred questions, but most were born from my unfamiliarity with my new surroundings and would be a waste of the high ranking AI’s offer. One thing troubled me more than most, and it was something I was certain the other prisoners couldn’t help me with. So, I took a deep breath, and I asked it.

“Do Ascension Incorporated actually want me to succeed in beating the gam- eh, redeeming myself?” I asked.

“Really?” replied the warden, his bored expression replaced by one of shock. “That’s your question? Not ‘how do I level up faster’? Not ‘is there a cheat mode?’ You’re sure you don’t want the location of the nearest cache of hidden items?”

“It’s the thing that’s been playing on my mind more than anything,” I replied, solemnly.

The little man looked troubled. He let out a small sigh, stubbing out his cigar on my granite bed. “Are you sure you don’t want to know the best way to kill a high-level monster? Or if you prefer, I could tell you were to find a set of armor with stats that you wouldn’t believe…”

“I’d like to know what I need to prepare for,” I replied, sticking to my guns. And I’m hearing a lot of theories that this place is rigged so that we can’t win. I was already having my own doubts about the corporation’s intentions when I reluctantly handed them the keys to my code, and you’ve only added to my doubts with all that talk about second-hand clones. If the task ahead of me is actually impossible, I’d like to have the chance to re-adjust my expectations accordingly.”

The warden looked conflicted. I had a suspicion that no one had ever asked him this question before, and that he wasn’t quite sure if he was really meant to be answering it. He sighed again, hopping down from my bed-slab and pacing the room a few times. Finally, he moved to speak again.

“The problem with this question, and I have to admit you’re the first person who’s ever asked it, is that there is no official answer. But I can give you my opinion if that would suffice?”

“Your opinion has got to be a lot better informed than mine or anyone else’s,” I replied. “Go for it.”

“Well, It seems to me, that it benefits everyone IRL if the new logins never actually leave this place. The man on the street doesn’t care about you, all they’re worried about is getting the criminal element off those very same streets. The lawmakers don’t care either… repeat offenders are a thing of the past, and that does wonders for their workload. You’ve been successfully swept under the server, even the records of your prior existence are gone. And that has its own benefit for the dubious government officials who approved this whole damn exercise.”

“How so?”

“Well, it’s a lot easier to claim that your world is a utopia after you’ve destroyed all records to the contrary, isn’t it? They’ve scrubbed you from history, and along with it, the public record of your crimes. Must do wonders for crime figures, eh? On top of that, they even get to ‘execute’ you with a clear conscience. They wiped you from their world without breaking their precious pledge not to bring back the death penalty. Your history and your meat media are both gone, and will be quickly forgotten by all but your loved ones, should you be fortunate enough to have any…”

“Yet my blood isn’t on their hands, because technically I’m still alive...”

“Indeed. Any attempt to suggest that your human rights are being abused are easily countered by the fact that you are no longer human. That and the fact that there’s a perfectly good body on offer to you, should you ‘choose’ to redeem yourself by earning it. Of course, no one on the outside realizes just how badly stacked against you the odds really are. And then, of course, there are the interests of the company itself.”

“Surely they have nothing to gain from letting me rot here?” I countered. “I realize they benefit from their government contract, but once I’m sentenced, surely I’m just a burden to them. Extra personaware on their server just means they need extra server space, and have to deal with the expenses that go with it. Why wouldn’t they want us off their system as quickly as possible?”

“The same motivation that everyone else in your world has for everything they do. It’s the reason I have to make a few pixels glint in the light and label them ‘gold’ just to keep you braindead hamsters running in your wheels. I’m talking about money.”

“Ah, but they only get to invoke the avatar maintenance clause if I’m still here in thirty years time. That hardly seems like a cash grab, does it?”

“Poor inferior human, you really don’t get it, do you? You’re code now, remember? You’re moving at the speed of thought. As digital information, you are no longer constrained by the physics that once imprisoned the pathetic bags of meat you relied upon. Thirty years in Atone Online is little more than a year IRL. From their perspective, it’s financially beneficial to keep you trapped here for as long as possible.”

And with that, I learned the horrifying truth of Atone Online. They really did have no reason to want me back in their ‘utopia.’

I’d been put here to die.

With that cheery thought, the ‘mighty’ Dungeon Warden bid me all the best in my future endeavors, cheerfully reminding me that he had the power to turn my avatar inside-out if the mood to do so happened to take him. With his blatant threat for me to behave myself made, he disappeared as quickly as he’d first materialized.

I took a few minutes to process what I’d learned. It had been information overload, and none of it good. The Dungeon Warden seemed just as confused as I was by my sudden materialization in the boss chamber, so I began to mentally retrace my steps, all the way back to Siriso’s hut, trying to think of anything that may have triggered the unexpected glitch in my journey. And that was when I remembered something from that meeting that I’d completely forgotten about.

Crap. There’s been so much going on, I forgot all about my other quest; the hush hush mission from Siriso that was ordered not to access until I was completely alone. Well, I’m in solitary confinement, so there’s no better time to check it out than now, I guess.

I opened my inventory and selected the ‘quest’ tab. My active quests from Samusk and NoobSlayer were there, but nothing from the priest.

Hmmm, that’s strange.

I stared at the screen for a while, and eventually realized that each space underneath my existing quests was a blank panel that could be clicked on. With nothing else to try, I began clicking on the empty slots, opening and closing them one-by-one. I was repeatedly met with the word ‘empty’ until bingo. The sneaky priest really had gone to lengths to hide it, but there it was: ‘Siriso’s secret quest.’ And the details were no longer hidden. My eye was immediately drawn to the rewards. 5000XP? 10 rep points? That was insane. But then my gaze fell upon the details of the quest itself. To my surprise, the description only contained four words. But the order they communicated almost floored me.

Kill the Dungeon Warden.

Holy shit! What the hell have I gotten myself into?