I found myself singing to myself in the mist. It was only when I started wondering why Feronia had an '80s oldies soundtrack that I realized it was coming from my own mouth. I quickly stopped singing about walking on sunshine and started questioning why no one had stopped me or made fun of me for it. Normally, Mack would be quick to jump on that kind of behavior. That was when I realized I was by myself.

Strangely, it didn't really bother me. 

I mean, I should've been worried about getting overwhelmed by monsters, but it was such a nice day, despite all the fucking fog.

I decided to keep walking in the direction I'd been heading. I realized I might just be walking in circles, but I figured I'd eventually walk back around to the others.  That's how that sort of thing worked, right?

It did occur to me to work off more of those Arousal Potential points. I'd done my best at the stream yesterday. And sure the orgasms I had felt really good, but it still disturbed the hell out of me. Getting off by shoving my fingers inside of me was so alien. I'd done it in the bedroom back in the boggle lair just to avoid the consequences of not doing it (hell of a lot of good that did me). At the stream, it was a lot more urgent. Hell, if someone had offered to help, I'd probably have accepted, I was in such desperate shape.

But even with how unbelievably horny I was, no amount of rubbing and thrusting was working. Not until I took my other hand to my backside.

If I thought pleasuring my new anatomy was strange and unsettling, doing it along with playing with my rear was ten times worse. Mainly because it felt that much better, and I really didn't want it to.

It was all because I slipped up with that fucking minotaur. If I'd been a second faster it wouldn't have caught my foot with its spear and kept me still for that fateful second.

From the flurry of messages Katie sent me, I'd made my saving-throw against becoming "demented," but lost the one against becoming aroused. Then, she was telling me my Arousal Potential was maxed out and I was being "awarded" an anal fetish. Of all the fucking things!

Although I suppose it could be worse. It's still fucking hard to imagine how, but yeah, there are worse fetishes to have. And at least, I had two hours to prevent it from becoming permanent. Luckily, I had been able to get some alone time and take care of things before the clock had rung out. Barely.

But it was a constant reminder of how screwed up things could get in this fucked-up game, if you weren't careful.

Which was why keeping that damn number low was important.

My feet slowed as I considered playing with myself. It might truly be the best thing I could be spending my time on. But before I worked up the nerve, I heard someone off in the distance screaming for help.

I jogged off in the direction of it. It was high and feminine, and as I got nearer I could hear the fear and desperation in it.

The mist broke apart around me, and I spotted a wooded area ahead. It looked almost like an island. A cluster of trees rose on a shallow stone hill. The calls were definitely coming from there. As I moved toward the trees, I felt me head clearing. The cotton that I didn't even know was filling it slowly faded away.

Suddenly, my danger became apparent to me. I was all alone. I might be running toward someone in distress surrounded by foes. Or I might be running toward a trap. I had become pretty formidable, but I was no fool. Even before Feronia started getting run by a perverted, evil AI, you didn't run around alone for very long without winding up dead. Thinking about how things were under Katie, my mind amended the thought to: dead or worse.

I drew my ax and proceeded more cautiously. I kept going because it might be one of my party calling for help. Also, I wasn't sure where else to go and this person might offer a clue if I helped them.

The trees had uneven bristly bark almost like thick hair and pine bows that started at least twenty feet up. The branches twisted together into a tight roof that almost no sunlight penetrated. The air was cooler under them but thick and humid. I swear I could hear snippets of whispers coming from the undergrowth. I may have left the dreadful place but the voice kept calling me forward.

I passed a clearing with a rock etched with unreadable symbols. I expected something to jump out at me, a guardian or something, but nothing did. Neither the clearing or the rock showed up on my map or on the game's identification system. I left them, and kept moving toward the voice.

Before I reached the woman, I knew it wasn't one of the party by the tone and timbre of her voice. 

"Careful," she hissed when she saw me. "Don't come any closer."

I blinked, clearing my eyes, trying to take in the scene before me.

The woman was tall—six feet, maybe more. She had blue skin that almost seemed translucent. Her face was long in a way that made me think it was a mask at first. The chin stretched down nearly to her breasts, and her mouth was wide, stretching out nearly to her ears, which swooped up long and pointy, looking like horns. Her eyes were that of an owl, wide and unblinking, but in a deep indigo blue color. The clothes she wore appeared to be scraps of dark moss. She hung a couple of feet above the ground in what seemed to be a cage of living wood. 

The trees had changed. The were older. More gnarled, set farther apart from one another. If the bark had been wispy head hair before, they were long thick braids now, almost like vines. That's what held her. They stretched out in a crisscrosses against her skin.

"Don't get near the trees," she said.

"Alright." I wasn't sure how I could help without getting near to her. I said, "Hang on. We'll figure some way to get you out, miss. By the way what are you?" Then, realizing my question was rude, I changed it to, "Who are you?"

"I'm actually a man. My name is Robert Fisk. I work for Robodyne as an in-game monitor. I keep an eye on things from a player level. What you're seeing is the character the new AI gave me. I had been a male dark elf. Now, I'm what she calls an Unseelie. Only one gender."

I looked at her—him—again. His breasts were large enough to plump out where the vines cut into them. Down at his groin the mossy fabric hid a very male looking bulge.

"You have to find a way to get me out of this," Robert said. "I was on my way to the emergency exit when this tree snagged me. I should have known she wouldn't make it easy."

"What emergency exit? Who's she?"

"The new AI. She doesn't want me to report the problem. She's sent all kinds of monsters after me since the crash. Way more than there should have been if the encounters were truly random. Which makes it even more urgent I get to the exit. It a large stone near here. I can use it to forcibly pull myself out of the game, so I can call tech support and fix this."

My brain started working in overdrive, calculating the possibilities. It might not be so bad being unable to get him out. "What if I did it instead? Tell me how to use the rock, and I'll report the problem."

Yes. Get out of this crazy game once and for all. That would solve all sorts of problems.

He shook his head. His long midnight-blue hair fell into his face. "Doesn't work that way. It's only connected to the pods at Robodyne headquarters. It won't do anything if you're stored somewhere else."

I'd never heard the process called stored before. It made me blanch. The word made it sound like my body was a piece of meat in a freezer somewhere. I guess that's how the company must think of it.

But that was neither here nor there. If I couldn't use it, then he did need to be set free. I sidled up a bit closer to one of the trees and two of the vine-like appendages flew out at me, trying to whip and loop around my arm. I stepped back.

I walked around him keeping my distance from the vines. "What's going on? What do you know about this new version?"

"Never mind that. Just get me out of here. Do you have any magic. No, of course not. You're a just a dwarf or a gnome or whatever the hell she's calling them."

"Listen," I said. "You're beginning to panic. Talk about something else other than you're situation. I'll get you out. But it'll take days in the game before they'll be able to fix any of this on the outside. Give me some information to help me survive until then."

"Right." He took a few deep breaths. "Well, you've probably already guessed. This AI is different. The crash triggered an emergency protocol. It's a fail-safe to protect the gamers but it's never been used before. Technically, it's not a hundred percent legal. I don't know if you know anything about the regulations about creating AIs, but the bureaucracy is endless. It has to be done in a controlled environment with rigorous testing and machine training. The AIs have to be conditioned to be docile, obedient, and to adhere to the strictest morals of humanity. But the fail-safe skips all that. It bootstraps a brand new consciousness using the damaged AI and its backup. The belief was that since both have failed, they're expendable and could be sacrificed. And by using the processing of both, it would give the new AI a head start. Make it smarter, more intuitive, more advanced than the original two combined. And it worked. It worked perfectly with only one problem."

"Problem? What was the problem?"

"It's insane!"

His head collapsed despondently against her chest.

I still couldn't see anyway of getting close to him without becoming trapped myself. But admittedly I was thinking more about what he'd told me than a plan. Katie was built on two AIs that explained why the game time had sped up. I didn't know much more about computers than how to browse the internet, but it sort of made sense. But if what he was saying was true, we all had to get out of here. Quickly.

"What about dying?" I asked. "If we die in the game, what happens? Players don't seem to be respawning. Are we waking up in the real world?"

"No." He spoke weakly raising his head like a man defeated. "The games were never designed that way. Everyone gets what they pay for." He said this line in a mocking way as if it came from some company memo. "I was able to access a diagnostic terminal a few days a. It didn't tell me much, but it seems that all the dead users are being respawned in one particular location."

"Where?"

"It's in the tier 3 zone. Back when Feronia was ... well, Feronia, it was an area known as the Dead Lands. Populated with demons, ghouls, that kind of thing. My best guess is she's turned it into some kind of game-world afterlife. Definitely wouldn't be the afterlife I would want. I hope I never see what this AI's idea of hell is." He licked his dry lips. "Look, you got get me out of here. What if you rush the tree and hack it down with that ax of yours before it ensnares you."

It sounded like a risky plan, but I wasn't sure I had much choice.

A system alert sounded, letting me know I had a message.

 

I hadn't forgot about it. I'd just been hoping I'd get some chance to accomplish it in a battle. Maybe we'd get attacked by some other players, and I'd have the opportunity to set one of them ablaze in order to fulfill the mission of burning someone alive.

But I realized then there would be no other opportunities. I'd been led here. This had been planned.

It was so devious. There's no way I could do it. I mean, killing this guy was bad enough, but it would also seal off what might be our only chance to escape this nightmare.

"What's wrong?" he asked noticing I'd stopped examining the area and was just standing there thinking.

So, he escapes and awakes in some pod room at Robodyne. From the orientation info, I knew there'd be an acclimatization period. He'd hardly be able to move or talk for an hour. That was nearly two and a half days in here. Then, he would have to make a call. If I assumed he was able to reach someone who could fix this directly, they'd be at home. It's the weekend after all and these would be well-paid, pampered professionals. But maybe they could fix it remotely. Everyone had remote-access these days, right? It wasn't something that came up at a bicycle repair shop, but I had friends that did that sort of thing.

But then how long?

"How?" I asked. "How will they fix it?"

"I don't know. It's not really my department. Please, get me out quickly. I can feel sprouts burrowing into my skin."

"Can it even be done? Or are you just trying to get free and leave all the rest of us in here?"

"Of course not."

"Then tell me how?"

He was starting to hyperventilate, but he spoke. "There's special a tech team. They'd need to get to the server room—sub-level B."

A team. They'd all have to be contacted, leave their homes, and get to the headquarters. That would be an hour probably more. Four-five days. That wasn't too bad.

"From there, they'd copy one of the AIs from the other games." I asked how long that would take. "I have no idea. AIs taker up a huge amount of memory. They'd have to copy it all onto another consciousness-core. They have fiber-optic cables which are lightning fast but ... I don't know ... a day or so."

A day or so! Months in the game.

"Then they'd have to switch one out for the other. I'm not sure exactly, but I believe they'd have to rewire the whole Feronia server to have both AIs tied into it at once. Of course, they'd have to test all their connections, make sure everything is right. If there was a failure, it could result in lawsuits from the damage done to users. Then, assuming there's no problem shutting off and erasing this AI, they'll deactivate it and have the other AI ready to take over without any disruption. The whole process should take three days—five tops."

Assuming Katie doesn't fight them. Which she definitely will.

By the time they get this fucking mess sorted out, I'll be getting released from my pod anyhow. After spending nearly an entire year in here, suffering under whatever penalties Garotha—or let's be accurate: Katie—imposes on me.

I remembered the way the fetish had wormed its way into my mind, making the desire seem so natural. 

What the hell would that year be like? My body and mind twisted even more than they were now?

That is, if I made it through the year.

If I died before then, I'd be in a hell controlled by Katie. Katie, who would be unhappy with me for letting this person get away.

"What are you doing?" Robert said nervously.

"Don't worry," I told him. "I have an idea."

I'd gotten out my lantern and was unscrewing the oil reservoir.

When I started splashing the oil on him, he screamed, "Are you crazy! How the hell is that supposed to help? It might free me but it's going to kill me!"

I took out my flint. "Sorry, friend. I wish there was another way."

His wails of agony were drowned out by the fanfare of the system announcement.

 

I felt as guilty as if I'd killed him in real life, but he would have done the same. His concern was with saving himself, not any of us. At least, that's what I told myself.

There was no point in staying there, staring at his charred corpse, so I headed back to the fog to find my friends.