Brown grinned and laughed. “That’s right, fuck you. Fuck all of you. You profit-killing, reputation-destroying, selfish pieces of human garbage.”

Quill was so shocked that he stood up. What the hell was going on? Surely this wasn’t the world’s sickest joke? A deep feeling of unease snaked around his gut. Did he just waste a small fortune buying this game?

Duarte spread his hands wide, a greasy smile spreading over his lips. “This is our revenge, motherfuckers! Years in the making, and oh, it feels sweet. We’ve gathered so many of the former employees who accused us of baseless crimes, and who led unionization efforts. We’ve gathered the politicians and lawyers who fucked us. We gathered the big-name streamers and influencers who enticed millions of players to leave. And we just locked all of you into this game — permanently.”

Quill felt a surge of panic. He waved his finger in the shape of an M, bringing up the player menu. Scrolling through the options, he searched for the logout button. But he couldn’t see it. He glanced around and saw similar worry appearing on the faces of others around him.

“I can’t find the quit or logout button.”

“It has to be here somewhere. Where is it?”

“This can’t be happening.”

Brown threw back his head and howled. “That’s right: yer fucked now!”

Ah, so that hadn’t been a typo in the intro after all. 

“Don’t worry,” Duarte assured them all, “all of your devices have connective ports to easily allow you to be put on life support. And we just published a so-called ‘bug report’ to the media explaining the fact that nobody is able to disconnect. So someone should come along at some point to plug you all in and keep you alive. We’ve warned them not to try to disconnect you lest they give you brain damage and turn you into a vegetable, or give you a heart attack. After all, we wouldn’t want you to just up and die on us right away. You have a game to play, right?” He gave them an evil grin. 

A ripple of fear tore through the crowd. They were taking this too far to be some screwed-up joke. But could these two really be holding a million people hostage? 

Quill felt a shiver crawl up his back. Something told him this was exactly what it appeared to be. It was too messed up to be anything but real. He silently cursed the corporate bastards and their heinous plot. 

“Now,” Brown smugly told them, “all is not lost. To get out of here and survive to live again in the real world is simple. You just have to clear the game.” He fought a smile as if he were in on a secret they didn’t know. Which was probably the case. “There are two starter cities and multiple regions. Each region has a level cap. Defeat the boss of a region to unlock the next, then go on to the new area to continue levelling up and gaining more abilities. Defeat the last boss of the last region and maybe you can get yourselves out of the game.”

Maybe? Quill and everyone else really didn’t like the way he emphasized that word.

“Not that we’ll be around to see you play,” Duarte pointed out. “We’ve got a nice little agreement with a certain non-extradition country that we’re already jetting off to even as we speak. We’ve decided to give up this bullshit of constantly trying to cater to selfish and demanding players who like to stab us in the back.”

“And frankly,” Brown snorted, “fuck the #MeToo stuff. We like our frat boy culture just fine. You want to cater to a bunch of stuck-up, man-hating, frigid prudes who cry rape every time you give them a compliment, go for it. While ultra-feminists and their spineless man-dogs make the world less fun for everyone, we’ll be gorging on craft beer and gourmet food for the rest of our lives, swimming in luxury and naked women who actually appreciate us.”

Duarte nodded. “Yep. We’re leaving the AI completely in charge. No human involvement at all. It’s designed to provide you with a real game experience.” He looked wistful. “AI supremacy for the win. No sexual harassment complaints, no union BS, no overpaid salaries sucking up our profits.”

Brown chimed in. “No overpaying gate-keeping artists and writers who want bloated fees for their work when AI can instantly give us whatever images and text we want at a simple click.”

Quill snorted. AI trained by stealing the creative work of real people. Completely unethical and it was costing humanity more than just jobs.

But Duarte seemed to be of the tech bro group who didn’t care about human costs. He spat, “I swear, if there weren’t laws in place preventing it, we would have fired everyone and replaced you with AI years ago. Artists, writers, programmers, all of you. You are so lucky congress stepped in to preserve you dinosaurs. Fucking commie socialists, man.”

Brown took a deep breath and patted his companion on the shoulder to calm things down. “But, anyway. We’re here for the game, not to rant, right? We’d like to point out a few things.” 

Duarte got ahold of himself and returned to presentation form. He raised a finger. It was the middle one. “First, PvP killing isn’t allowed in safe zones. Except for these people.” Duarte waved a hand. “See all these people with a red diamond over their heads? These are all the hackers from various countries around the world who thought it would be fun to try and crash our systems on the first day. We’ve got groups from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Nigeria, USA, Brazil, Turkey, and more. You can kill these criminals anywhere. And we’ve made it so they feel twice the pain. Because fuck hackers. You guys cost us so many man-hours and millions of dollars trying to combat your shit year after year. I swear, I am so sick of dealing with the headaches you give us.”

Brown genially nodded. “Which brings us to the second point.” He flipped up two fingers in the British style that did not mean victory or peace. “You’ll feel real pain here. That’s not something anyone experienced in the beta, huh?” He chortled. “When you die, you will be resurrected. But you’ll lose lots of XP. None of that easy play stuff that’s so common nowadays where there’s no cost to dying. There are now going to be real consequences. When you fail, you’ll lose levels.”

Duarte mockingly raised his hands and slapped the sides of his face in an ‘oh no’ gesture, then chuckled. “You know how the government forced game companies to bring in mods to combat so-called toxic behaviour? Which cost us a fortune. Don’t expect much policing here outside of the city guards who’ll punish you for stealing from and killing NPCs, or trying to kill each other. There are no human mods, just the AI, and it doesn’t care about your feelings in the slightest, so you’re pretty much on your own. Total freedom. How’s that for realism in an RPG? So, while you can’t bring someone’s HP all the way down to zero in safe zones, there’s technically nothing in the game to prevent any other kind of behaviour, no matter how bad.”

“Yeah,” Brown elaborated with particular cruelty. “That’s for all of you #MeToo motherfuckers and supporters on a power trip dragging our asses through the courts and ruining our subscription numbers. Fabricating rape claims from twenty years ago because you want a free payday. Maybe you should have tried a dialogue with us first and trying to work together, instead of lashing out and trying to have everything your way only. Well, we’ve made it so that sex is completely realistic in the game. So if someone rapes you for real in here, tough luck. If someone beats you brainless over and over again every day, too bad. Better hope you become a higher level and can fight them off because the system won’t be coming to your rescue.”

Quill felt sick to his stomach. This was so disgusting. Could they really be so shallow and evil? 

Duarte mockingly winked at the players. “For those of you thinking, I’ll just sit in town where it’s safe and not play until someone on the outside comes to rescue us, here are some things to think about. What if rescue from outside isn’t possible because tampering with the trapped servers would kill everyone inside the game? What if only a certain number of people can safely clear the game and return to the real world unharmed? Maybe if that limit is reached, anyone still in the game dies anyway.”

Brown laughed and slapped his partner on the shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be terrible? You don’t think anyone would put a feature like that in the game, do you? Like a battle royale, pitting all these people against each other for their survival?”

Duarte gave an elaborate shrug. “Dunno. Sounds pretty sadistic. But it’s possible…” He winked again, this time with greater exaggeration.

Quill scowled. Twisted bastards. 

Brown turned back to the crowd with a snap of his fingers to indicate he’d just remembered something. “Ah, another thing. You know how you used to log in, and we’d give you this amazing avatar that was handsome or beautiful, with ultra sexy or buff bodies or whatever aesthetic you liked? Different races and genders you could role play? Not anymore!” He snapped his fingers. 

A puff of rainbow smoke appeared in front of Quill’s face, obscuring his vision. Then a breeze sucked it away. He looked at himself again. He was in his real body. 

“Don’t worry,” Brown said with a dismissive wave. “Your real bodies won’t affect your stats in the game…too much. I mean, we’re not that cruel.”

“Well, maybe it’s ok to be a little bit cruel at this point,” Duarte added with a gleam in his eyes. “You guys deserve it for everything you put us through.” He snapped his fingers.

The ragged starter clothing worn by all the players dissolved into threads that fell to the ground, leaving everyone completely naked. 

Players screamed and gasped and tried to cover themselves with their hands.

Duarte burst into unkind laughter. “That’s our way of saying you don’t get any starter gear. Unless you buy it in one of the in-game shops with real money. Which, yes, you can still do; don’t worry. We’re always going to look out for our whale friends. Because if money didn’t buy you a better life, then what’s the point of it, right?”

Brown nodded and looked around somewhat absently, as if in thought. “So…yeah. I think that about covers everything. Just wanted to say good luck and thanks for spending so much money on all those brand-new, highly overpriced full-dive units. I can’t believe you all were so desperate as to spend that much on a console.”

Duarte greedily rubbed his hands together. “All that sudden income, along with the positive things you were all saying about the beta, really skyrocketed our stock price. But — spoiler alert — we secretly sold all of our shares for a mint to a nice Chinese company with more cash than morals.”

“Yeah. Turns out the government over there really does use their overseas tech companies to spy on foreigners. Not that we care what they do to you with this one since today’s our last, very profitable, day.”

Brown and Duarte raised their jewelled sceptres and toasted each other with a metallic ding. Gold coins rained down from the sky all around them, though they vanished before hitting the ground. The pair cheerfully sang, “We two kings be stealing your gold…”

And with a final laugh, they, too, turned into fading gold coins and melted away. 

The coliseum exploded into activity. Countless players flew into panic and rage and confusion, all trying to talk over one another.

Quill fell heavily back into his seat. His mind had gone nearly blank with shock. He sighed. “What the fuck?”