“So who’s the twink?”

“Excuse me?” Eris rubbed his head where he’d made impact with the large boxes stacked in the back of the large cargo bay. He propped himself up and looked at the woman. Wally groaned as he got up, audibly cracking his back, and then popping seemingly every single one of his vertebrae like a firecracker. “Who are you?”

“Eris,” Wally said, his voice a low whisper. He probably had the wind knocked out of him when they’d been scooped out of the air like butterflies with a net. “Meet Axle. She lives here.” He popped his back one more time. Axle stuck out her hand, and Eris looked at it for a few seconds. He took the hand when he finally realized what it was for, and she pulled him upright with ease. She was short, shorter than him by at least a foot and a half, but she made up for it with a physique that seemed designed to bench press a car. Eris couldn’t help but imagine her picking him up, and he felt his cheeks redden a bit. She was fairly young, in her mid-twenties, but bags under her eyes made her look almost a decade older. Her black hair was braided backwards and decorated with various little gold trinkets, and that extended to her clothing. Sure, she wore practical pants and a loose-fitting shirt, but there were little gears and cogs attached to her outfit everywhere, and her boots went ‘clink’ when she walked. 

“Heya, Eris,” she said. “Welcome to the Vulture.” She handed him a small bottle, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. “For your head,” she said. Eris gave it a tentative look, then decided to trust his saviours and downed it as he let his eyes wander around the room. The ship that had caught them was a dull grey, in stark contrast to the wood-and-bronze colour of the citadel-ship they’d been on before. Axle walked out of the room with a nod of her head, indicating that Eris and Wally follow her. “I know you’ll have questions,” she said with a wave of her hand, “because Sin here doesn’t explain shit.” Eris raised an eyebrow at Wally, or ‘sin’, who just shook his head. They walked through the narrow halls of the ship, which did have more of the wood paneling Eris was getting used to, albeit still darker and less… opulent than he’d seen in the floating palace. “Newcomers, if y’all survive, have to fall off the Citadel after the boss fight. Then the Vulture automatically picks them up. It’s kind of… a gathering hub, I guess. It just warps to one specific location in one specific circumstance.” She opened a door to what seemed to be something in between a large living room and kitchen. 

“And you live here?” Eris asked, looking around, his eyes wide. He’d never seen anything like this before. Well, not to his knowledge, at least.

“Yah,” she said. “It’s not bad, honestly. I get to meet all the newbies, and the Vulture is fun to fuck around with. As long as I can keep her flying, that is.” She looked at Eris and raised an eyebrow. “What possessed you to hop in, by the way? I’d think by now nobody would be dumb enough to try logging in.”

“Full wipe,” Wally said, walking past her and opening the fridge. There was a moment of comfortable silence while he retrieved some things, and then took a loaf of bread out of a cupboard. He was cutting sandwiches as he continued. “Didn’t even remember his own name.”

“Fuck,” Axle said. “I’m sorry, sugar. Most people don’t remember how they got into the game, but at least remember who they are.” She sat down and leaned on the table as she looked at Eris, offering him a seat as well. He happily took it. “Wally over there has his big brother, and they even remember each other. Lucky punks.”

“I’m like, five years older than you, Mazza. You don’t get to call me a punk.”

“I’ll stop calling you a punk,” she said, and shot him The Look, “when you stop acting like one.” Bringing a plate with a stack of sandwiches to the table, he offered them both cut triangles, then chomped down on his own.

“Frrr mngh,” he tried, then swallowed and tried again. “Fair enough. But yeah, full wipes happen but they’re rare. Most people have an impression of where they are, or even like, what they were thinking before hopping in. That’s how we got most news from the outside world. At least at first, anyway. You don’t even know where you are, do you?”

Eris shook his head and took a sandwich. “Not a clue. The first and only thing I remember is waking up in that room with… whatshisname waking me up, you shooting him. Nothing else.” Axle playfully slapped Wally on the arm.

“You need to stop killing Slade, Sin. He’s just a poor bot.”

“He annoys me,” Wally said with a smug grin. “Besides, his gun is better than the peashooter you’re supposed to get in the tutorial anyway. You still have that?” He looked at Eris, who shook his head again. “Lost it fighting the boss?”

“In the boss, actually,” Eris said, remembering his little stunt. “What’s with the ‘Sin’ thing?” He looked between Axle and Wally. Wally shrugged and got up to grab a couple glasses, leaving the woman to do the explanation.

“Well, you’ve got your name, right? So, when you boot up the game, you pick a username, because those have to be unique and the system has to be able to differentiate between people.” She nibbled on a sandwich as she spoke. “But the game also assigns a name, for ‘worldbuilding’ or some shit. Now,” she said in between bites, “I don’t give two shits about their worldbuilding, but a lot of people put stock in it. So I’m Alex Mazza, my username is Axle, and then the system decided I was Aleksandria. And if you call me that, I’ll step on you. And not in the fun way.” Eris had no idea what ‘the fun way’ was, but he blushed anyway. 

Wally sat down again with a pitcher that had some kind of blue-green liquid in it and poured three glasses. “I got the Character Name ‘Sinister’ for some reason. I thought it was cool the first few days so I used it. That’s when I met Axle,” he said, and they fistbumped without looking at each other. “She refuses to call me Wally because, and I quote: ‘You don’t look like a Wally.’” 

“I ain’t wrong, Sin,” she said. “Besides, you like it when I call you Sin. You get that goofy smile when you think I’m not looking.” Wally stuck out his tongue at her. “Punk.”

“Nerd.”

“I can snap you in half, q-tip. Don’t even try me. Anyway,” she turned back to Eris, who had been watching their interaction with amusement. Mostly he was happy to be resting for a moment, even if a lot of what he was being told was overwhelming. “Long story short to catch you up to speed: about a month ago--”

“Two, actually.”

“Jesus, two already? Anyway, couple months ago this game, ‘Clockworld: Retribution’, gets launched. Full VR integration. Real state of the art stuff. Millions of people play it on launch. Something goes wrong. The worst one I’ve heard is that it’s a stack overflow problem. That’s, uh…”

“I think I know what a stack overflow is,” Eris said, surprising himself. “Continue?”

“Anyway,” Axle said, shooting him A Look very similar to The Look she’d used on Wally earlier. “The whole thing, which is generated by these AI who are supposed to craft worlds based on all of this lore and worldbuilding, all starts to crash. All the AI break down. Admins lose privileges. Total system collapse… except that it’s not AI that keep the core thing going. It’s just these simple bots and servers. So the game keeps running, except that everything the AI were supposed to do, like teach you things during the tutorial, those stop working. Procedural generation is gone.” She took a sip of the weird juice, and Eris decided to follow her lead. It was almost sickeningly sweet, with a slightly spicy tang to it. “And here’s the kicker: when you die, the system’s AI is supposed to assign you a value, but no AI, no value. So it tries to kick you. But it’s AI that are supposed to disconnect you from the game.”

“Uh oh,” Eris said. 

“Uh oh is right. Once you log in, you can’t log out. The last few people who logged in did so to tell us not to try and log off, because you turn into a braindead vegetable if you do.” The Vulture shook a bit, and Eris looked up with alarm, tensing himself up. Axle patted him on the leg and he blushed again. “Don’t worry, sugar. We’re just descending. The Citadel ain’t too far from town.”

“Town?” Eris asked. “Town have a name?”

“Nooope,” Wally said. “Nobody can agree on anything. “It’s been ‘New Something or other’ a dozen times now and people keep wanting something else.”

“It’s where all the survivors are. Dying in here is… well, you know. Dying. Permanently. So we’ve been trying to eke out something of an existence in here, staying alive while we wait for people on the outside to figure out a way to save our hides.” She scrunched up her nose in a way that was more than a little cute. “I hate it, I prefer to solve my own damn problems.”

“Create them, too,” Wally said and got up, cleaning up the plate as he did. Axle didn’t even look upset or annoyed.

“That too,” she said, matter-of-factly. “C’mon, let me show you the rest of the ship now that you’ve had a moment to calm your nerves. How’s your head?”

“Better,” Eris said. He hadn’t even realized the pain had subsided as quickly as it had. It was still a little sore when he touched it, but the throbbing had gone away. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Anyway, this is the common area,” she said. “The server used to have hundreds of ships like this to deal with all the users logging in, but this is one of the last three left.” She gently banged a fist against one of the walls. “It’s been taking a lot of work keeping her in the air as it is.” She led the way to a couple of other rooms. Several doors didn’t open. “There’s user rooms in there that were supposed to be instanced, but when The Crash happened they stopped working,” Axle explained. “Engine room is down this way, and I’ve got a little shack set up there.” She walked past the hall she’d just pointed down, and into a room that was obviously the cockpit.

“Nobody’s flying the ship?” Eris asked, a little confused. The pilot’s seat was surrounded with levers and buttons, with a giant ship’s wheel in the center. All of it seemed to be moving on its own, lights clicking on and off on the varnished and polished dashboard. 

“Nah, she flies herself, most of the time. She knows this route well,” Axle said, patting the seat with love and care. “We can fly her where we want her, but it’s usually not worth it. A newbie shows and poof, we’re back at the Citadel.”

“If there were millions of people, how did they all fit on ships like this?” Eris asked as he looked at the landscape drifting past between them. It seemed to be improbably varied, forests adjacent to snowy flatlands with deserts only a dozen miles away. 

“There’s dozens of servers like this, sugar,” she said. “And apparently there’s dozens of planets, too. Although we still don’t know if those are on this server. Nobody who joined has been very clear on that.” She turned to Eris, crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway. “Which brings us to you, Eris.” 

“Me?”

“Why would someone join months after launch? You don’t remember, sure, but like, you had to have known before jumping in, right?” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Anyway, we’re coming up on the T--” She interrupted herself and then looked at Eris. “You don’t remember anything, right?”

Eris shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Do you even know what you look like?” More headshaking. “Come with me,” Axle said and grabbed him by the wrist. Her hands were warm and rough. He hadn’t expected the physical contact and for some reason it sent a shiver of electricity up through his arm that bounced around his chest and stomach. “The game designs you to look like, well, you,” Axle said as she dragged him through to a room. It was furnished and clearly lived-in. “So maybe this’ll jog some memories.” In the corner stood a full-length mirror, and for the first time since waking up, Eris saw himself.

He was unremarkable. Short, shaggy black hair that spiked slightly. Blue eyes. White skin. Thin features on a thin physique, bordering on lanky. His outfit wasn’t anything special, either. A part of him had expected to recognize himself, recognize anything, but the person on the other side of the looking glass was a stranger.

“It’ll do,” he said, and walked out of the room, not noticing Axle’s shocked expression.

Elamimax

"It'll do" :3

If you want access to several chapters that have already been released, you can check those out over on my Patreon, which would already go a long way in supporting me, which helps me write even more! In the meantime, why not check out my other stories? I've also been releasing We're Not So Different, You and I, as well as a new story, Among Brighter Stars. Feel free to check those out, too!.