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It was night in Kaah Mukul. The moonlight was visible bu
t diminished by the brilliant lights
of the skyscrapers, the street l
amps
, and the occasional bursts of gunfire. To the north were the ruins of the old city, the complex of stone pyramids and rusty red plazas that was carefully preserved but scarred with history and war, surrounded on one side by the wall that had so miraculously held off the Conquistadors. To the east was the massive, sheer dome of the Montezuma Arena, the second-most dominant building in the city and the flagship arena for professional Ullamaball. Shifting clusters of green specks were the helmets of the Ahtzon, the Kaah Mukul police, patrolling the streets and getting into occasional fights. People flooded in and out of the arena, the plaza, the streets, all heading off to one adventure or another. He knew that many of them
would die that night, some several times, but
that was fine
because everyone came with the understanding that
the city
was a place where failure had no meaning
,
where there were
no lasting consequences. That was
untrue
, of course,
but it was to his advantage not to let people know. Actions always have consequences.

The Chinese project was a welcome respite from the lesser, more mundane demands that were the curse and price of creative success. His real office
was bombarded with
stacks of requests from developers and advertisers, most of them uninspired. Some merely wanted access to ChangZhang technology, others some piece of the city itself. There was a Belgian company offering
an absurd amount of money
to rename a street after their product. An entomologist wanted to release virtual cockroaches into the city to observe their dispersal patterns. A company in the U.S. was asking for permission to install a new wind-powered technology onto the surface of one of the skyscrapers—that one was vaguely interesting. And, of course, there were the incessant requests for consultations from his own government. But these requests were from people who didn’t really understand his company or his motivations.
So h
e was thankful
that the Chinese had come along. They understood
the games of reality
and the seriousness of fantasy.

Even as he stared, ideas began t
o come, as they invariably did.
He looked through the glass, seeing past his dark, partial reflection, and set loose an untethered thought.

A game within a game within a game within…

A subtle ding from his desk brought him back to the video monitor.
His a
ssistant reminded him that he ha
d a meeting with an
American who wanted to integrate ChangZhang technology into a grand facility that was being built. Noh had nearly forgotten about it.

As he
prepared to leave,
he heard the muffled, anguished cries of someone getting his chest ripped open with an obsidian knife, and the dull thudding of a body being thrown down the stairs, right past his southern wall. He pushed a button on
the controller in his hand
. As his mind began to return to his own body in Seoul,
where it was the middle of the day,
he allowed
one
last gaze at his creation and smiled to himself. In a moment, it all vanished into blackness.

[
West Division
: First Round]

[Friday, March 20]

Perry Lynwood sat in his parked car, only forty feet from the strip mall’s cov
ered walkway. All he could
see
was
a warped blur behind the steady flow of torrential rain
drops
on the windshield. The closest parking spot he’d been able to find was next to a large, well-polished black pick-up truck that had been parked just a little over the line. Perry’s tiny Ford had barely squ
eezed in. He clutched his duffel
bag and umbrella in his lap, preparing for a quick series of maneuvers. The plan was to open the door, open the umbrella, hop out, close the door, and jog a rapid forty feet to safety. He listened to the muted pattering of millions of
engorged rain drops on the roof
and counted:

3…2…1…

Door open, umbrella open, umbrella up, tight squeeze for Perry, tight squeeze for the duffel bag, a twist to close the door… and the sickening realization that the keys were still on the seat. Door open again, duffle bag over the shoulder, umbrella aloft with the other hand, squeeze back through the door, grab the keys, all set, plan executed. Suddenly,
a powerful gust of wind yanked
his umbrella and arm up and backwards, pulling his body into his car door, which slammed into the truck’s
polished
side. Swearing
through his teeth
, Perry closed his door with his hip. He inspected the small dent in the truck as best he could through wet glasses. At last, he turned and walked across the lot to the walkway. When he was safe and sheltered, he looked back. It was too wet to leave a note, he reasoned, and too many stores to hunt the owner down. It was bad luck, but what could he do? A flash of lightning, slow and bright and closer than
seemed
normal, startled him into a quicker pace as he walked to the entrance of Seattle’s
largest
KM Center.

“Brutal storm tonight, right?” commented the bored clerk, barely looking up from his phone
as Perry dripped through the door, his sneakers squeaking conspicuously.

“Yeah.” Perry shook his stubborn umbrella
closed
.

“Wasn’t supposed to rain at all. I even brought my bike today. Ever feel like life is seriously just out to get you?” The clerk
jawed some gum.

“Sometimes.
” Perry made his way to the large door in the back without a glance at the shelves of merchandise. He waved a magnetic membership pass over a
sensor, and the door slid open
. Taking a deep breath, he exhaled all thoughts of rain,
expensive
trucks, and Seattle, and walked underneath a sign that read: “
Ootzen
.
Welcome to Kaah Mukul
.”

The door opened onto a wide platform that overlooked an amphitheater. On the stage below were four players, each wearing interface headsets around their eyes and ears and holding baton-like controllers strapped around their hands and feet. They ran and swerved in place, seeming to face each other blindly. The giant projection screen above them showed what the players were seeing: a wide
,
rectangular ball court covered with packed dirt and surrounded by vine-covered stone walls. The players danced and dodged as they each manipulated the movements of three virtual players with their bodies, trying desperately to get the ball into one of t
he two vertical hoops mounted over
the court without getting kicked in the head. Ullamaball really was a beautiful game, Perry thought as he
passed
by
the viewing platform
. It was an elegant mix of soccer, basketball, and tae-kwon do, infused with the ancient Meso-American mystique that pervaded all of Kaah Mukul. But it wasn’t for him.

Perry left the Ullamaball
room
behind and made his way down a hallway, pas
t
the large room full of consoles for
those many
Kaah Mukul patrons who hadn’t spent as much
time or
money
there
as he had. His true domain was set apart for those who, like him, were truly serious
about doing something significant in the virtual city
.

The Tribal Room opened with a wave of Perry’s ID card. His young fellow travelers were already inside, seated around a rectangular table that dominated the center of the room. Perry nodded hello to them as he made his way to his seat at the table’s head. He looked down at
the information already feeding into his personal monitor
to see if there was anything new. A constant stream of statistics scrolled down, reloading every five seconds:

Warriors of Tsepes

Dominance ranking………32.70

Tribal membership….
……
.
27

Territory controlled (%)
….
16

Money accrued (K$)….....
..
109,012

Total kills…………………...
146

Est. weapon strength………..

While he read, he removed a black and red bandana from the duffle bag and tied it around his right bicep. Then he plugged in his personal headset and controllers, put the bag behind his chair, and settled down in front of the nameplate which pronounced him General Studblood.

The table itself was striking. The wooden legs were thick as tree trunks and carved with ancient American motifs of pythons and jaguars. The tabletop was a computer int
erface. Each of the six chairs (
only four of them occupied) commanded a small private interface, but the entire center of the table top displayed a vibrant, dynamic map of the city of Kaah Mukul. Lights representing the real-time movements of tribal members slid around the outlines of virtual streets and buildings. It was always beautiful, thought the General, always a work of genius.

He glanced around, contented, at the three individuals standing at the table, each staring into their interfaces. The officers of the Warriors of Tsepes were all wearing the tribal bandanas, all busy working, and all on time. The secrets of the city, the General
repeatedly preached, were only revealed
by diligence.

“OK, repo
rts!” he barked.
To the General’s left was his first-in-command, a skinny twenty-something with a desperate, peach-fuzz moustache and a sharp chin. Killergremlin was always the first to report. The Tribe took pains to recognize rank. As he spoke, his wide, toothy smile seemed to stretch up on both sides to touch each of his unusually pointy ears.

“We broke the code,” he announced.

“Put it up,” the General ordered, pleased but not surprised. One of the many reasons he loved being in Kaah Mukul was the depth of the code-breaking necessary to progress as a tribe. The Tsepesians prided themselves on being able to decrypt anything they
found at high speed, giving them a substantial edge over the other tribes. This particular code had been obtained just yesterday by one of his many underground contacts and was unusually difficult. That they had cracked it was a source of pride.

The translated text was full of garbled gaps, but embedded in the noise was a set of clear words:

Special opportunity: Sinan Cafe, Little Cuzco, 11:00 KMT, Saturday, contact Tula, codeword: Variolas. One representative only.

The General read over the string of words several times, then asked the group for an interpretation. A good leader always included everyone.

Their newest officer, a doughy high school graduate called Lazaro, spoke up. “Sounds like a commercial. They want us to show up so they can sell us something. Lame.”

“Maybe,” said Killergremlin, “but that was a pretty elaborate code for a commercial.”

“But that’s the game, right? Everything in code?” Lazaro argued.

The General cringed slightly at the word “game”. Lazaro still didn’t get it. Nevertheless, he could be right; the message did, in fact, have a certain commercial feel to it. But the contact that had passed it on to the General didn’t usually handle junk mail. He wanted to take it seriously.

“I’ll check it
tomorrow
,” the General decided. “I’ll take a back-up team. If it’s some company making a pitch, you all can come help me shoot up the room.”

“What’s a Variolas?” asked Lazaro.

“Isn’t it like a violin, but bigger?” Killergremlin answered.

“That’s a viola,” said Psychopedia, who was very smart for a tenth-grader. “I believe a Variolas is a kind of flower.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the General. “It’s just the code word. It could be ‘snotlicker’ and it would do the same thing. Are there any other reports?”

There were none.

“Good. I’m going down to re-task some patrols. I think there’s some Scarmada guys patrolling east of Tikal Street. We need to consolidate that sector before they get any more ground, so if I see them, I’ll call you in.” The General began to wrap the headset interface around his eyes, but he was interrupted.

“Soooo….” Lazaro interrupted, “you guys haven’t forgotten my spring equinox party tomorrow, right?” The others looked around the table. It wasn’t a group that was commonly invited to parties, much less ones that had to do with Lazaro’s inventive form of paganism, so no one had forgotten. Nor had any of them accepted.

“I can’t,” said Psychopedia, sheepishly. “Bassoon recital.”