Graphic (c) 2002, Sheri

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: I'm not aware of any game-book series called Secrets of the Game; the following "excerpt" is fictional. // Click the JPEG to see a larger version of Sheri's game-box graphic.	

BEFORE YOU PLAY

From Secrets of the Game: Hellcats 3.0.1

(c) 2002, Sheri

Welcome to the latest, greatest release of Hellcats: version 3.0.1, from Arrested Development Software. You'll find all the features that have made Hellcats a classic, plus some awesome new tweaks:
* An improved Shield of Righteousness (Chapter 1)
* Cool new weapons (Chapter 1)
* A new Joe's Disco on Level 6 (Chapter 4)
* New interactive options (every chapter)
Best of all:
* Smaller clothes
This book's an upgrade, too. Check out the CD in the back. We've packed it with lots of great stuff, including the latest on all the official Hellcats conventions, fan clubs, Web sites, mailing lists, and merchandise. And be sure to check our site for updates since this book went to press.
For New Players
If you're new to the game, here's all you need to know to get started. You, the gamer, have to find your way through the seven levels of Hell to get to Heaven. Sound easy? Not. You've got three gorgeous, leather-wearing, soul-sucking problems: Morbida, Vexatia, and Dementa. The Hellcats will do anything to keep you in Hell. And in version 3.0.1, we really mean anything.

TIP
Try to lose on purpose the first 40 or 50 times.	
	
NOTE
This game is rated M, because it can get really graphic. (Stick around and we'll show you how in Chapter 9.)	

So grab your stick, load the game, and let's get started!

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

To Part 1	Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***

Graphic (c) 2002, Sheri

READ ME FIRST

DISCLAIMERS
// This story is fiction and meant to be read as satire. Friendly satire. Mostly. But anyone who takes fandom too seriously won't want to read it at all.
// Nothing's too explicit, and what goes past PG-13 goes past it only for storytelling purposes, but don't even think about reading this story if you're younger than 18.
// The game characters' names are pronounced Mor-BEED-a, Vex-A-tia, and De-MENT-a. (Not "Dementia.")
// The characters, companies, Web sites, games, and most of the situations are my own fault, not to be confused with anyone or anything real.
// I'm not a gamer, let alone a programmer, and any/all technical errors are my own.
Most important:
// Yes, the names are stupid on purpose.

CREDITS
// Unspeakable thanks to my beta readers—Rocky, Lyraine, D.J., Elles, and Poto—and to the Devil's Workshop list. // Thanks also to Sheri for the graphics.

E-MAIL
KSimpson@the-devils-workshop.com	

TO COVER
	TO INTRO

***

Graphic (c) 2002, Sheri

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as GameWorld Weekly.	

PART 1

CHAPTER 1
In the Game

Morbida was having a bad day. It was her business to give bad days, not get them, but the programmers had given her one too many emotions in that last upgrade. Now, in addition to the primary colors of anger, rage, and revenge, she had a light wash of self-pity. She'd known since the first beta that she was digital—just another villain in just another moronic computer game—but she hadn't known that she would come to be more.
In fact, she was a star now, burning hotter with every play.
Morbida knew it. So did Vexatia and Dementa. That was the problem.

From GameWorld Weekly

Review of the Week
Hellcats 3.0.1
There's not much I can tell you that you don't already know about this one, folks. It's still a really dumb game with no real point. All it is is an excuse for explosions and digital sex, and we know it.
That's why we love it.
You know how it works. You're in Hell, and you have to get past three babes in skin-tight leather to go to Heaven. But who wants to go to Heaven? The Hellcats are way too hot. Their job is to tempt you to stay in Hell, and you know what that means. Sooner or later, they'll get naked.
A lot of people have asked why we need a game for that when we've got a whole Internet. Well, if you're a regular on this site, you know the secret already.
It's in the interactivity.
Arrested Development Software has an official line about that: They say those holes in the code were accidental. As a tester for the gold beta, I disagree. The game's too slick technically for that kind of mistake; even in beta, the Hellcats were so real-looking that I thought I was watching TV. Really cool TV. And when I found out that I could get inside and tweak it...
OK, so my wife didn't see me for a few days.
Now every gamer with a fast connection can find out the same thing I did. You can get code from fan sites to add on to the game, or you can roll your own. Either way, the Hellcats can do the most interesting things these days. I can't tell you exactly how, but just go on the Hellscape and see for yourself. You won't be sorry.
About this new release, though...	

Morbida had quit reading at that point. All it meant was that the Hellcats could interface, as in sexually, and usually did.
That didn't bother her. She didn't like Vexatia and Dementa, and vice versa, but better to interface with them than with gamers. What was the big deal, anyway? It was only sex. Only trading a few 1s and 0s. Besides, she was the leader, so she usually got to call the shots. Except for the time that college brat in Brooklyn patched in the herd of Viagra-crazed ponies (which she'd finally had to kill with the Sword of Doom), nothing she couldn't handle had happened yet.
What did bother her was that the Hellcats were famous now—for that; the game itself be damned. There were Hellcats fan clubs, books, and merchandise. There were countless Web sites, loosely confederated into something called the Hellscape. And for the past year, there'd even been conventions. It wasn't enough that people wanted to own Morbida, Vexatia, and Dementa action figures, posters, T-shirts, trading cards, keychains, and barware; they also wanted to dress up like the characters and parade around in public that way. Even the boys. Especially the boys.
Morbida didn't understand that part. Personally, she hated her costume. She could live with the tight black leather and even the homicide heels on the boots, but she had problems with the big black metal cones on the chest of the catsuit, like torpedoes sharpened to killing points. A breastplate would've been all right, given the genre, but these cones were just ridiculous. All three of the Hellcats were anatomically impossible anyway; more exaggeration was in the worst possible taste. And the cones were totally impractical in some situations. Only a few hours ago, Dementa had impaled Vexatia with hers, again, and they'd had to crash the player's system while Vexatia regenerated, again.
In her idle microseconds, Morbida hoped that all the morons who were going around dressed up like them would impale one another in real life. And bleed real blood. They'd be having another convention this weekend, so there was reason to hope.
Most of all, she hoped that all the Vexatia and Dementa impersonators would do one another in—especially the Dementas. She'd just been vanity surfing, and for the first time, the search engines were turning up more matches for Dementa than they were for her.
Hence, the really bad mood.
"I hate you, you stupid loser trolls," Morbida told the list of sites she'd pulled up. "I'll have you know she pads her cones. And she's not even a real blonde."
The part about the padding wasn't strictly true, but it made her feel better. So did crashing a couple dozen servers, starting with the one she'd run the searches on. Then she went back to looking for the code that would finally set her free. What good was it to be famous when you couldn't get out of your own game?
She was trying her damnedest. She vowed that when she did get out, she'd delete Dementa.
And that bitch Vexatia, too.

In the Lab

Bunny Lovell was having a bad night. The Hellcats upgrade was still as buggy as a Dumpster, and her boss had pulled her off her own projects to help out.
"But I don't know anything about it," she'd insisted. "I do children's games. You know—Benny the Bunny. Counting Cows. Singing with Chickens. That stuff."
She didn't add that she didn't like them. Everybody called her "Bunny" because of that one stupid game, which was really embarrassing. But it was better than working on shoot-'em-ups. Ethically better, anyway.
Her boss, however, had never met an ethic in his life, which was why he was the boss. "Can't help it. There's a big convention this weekend, and Dementa keeps losing pixels off her boobs. We need that patch."
She tried reason again. "Who's going to notice a few pixels? They could already poke somebody's eyes out."
"Just fix it, Lovell."
So she played a few rounds of Whack-A-Mole, blew up a few planets in a tester game, and pasted her boss's head on Jar-Jar Binks's body. That last thing cheered her up just enough that she could finally get down to work.
But it had been late already then, and it was much later now. The last time she'd looked up, she'd realized that she was alone in the lab. Frowning, she checked her watch. 11:30. Damn. Her cats were going to kill her.
Bunny figured she had another hour of coding left, so she decided to go down to the vending room to get one more Jolt. That ought to hold her through the last of it. As a precaution, she'd get something chocolate too.
She gave the screen another quick check before she left. Dementa was looking more symmetrical now, so she was getting close.
What she didn't notice was Morbida lurking just off the right edge of the screen.

In the Game

This was interesting. She wasn't sure how she'd found it, but Morbida thought she might be in the software company's lab—right inside one of the programmers' computers.
"That'll do," she said.
Eagerly, she started scanning the hard drive. By now, she knew pretty much what to expect, so she didn't bother with the posts to the "Star Trek" lists, the "Star Wars" AVIs, or all those JPEGs of William Shatner. One thing stumped her momentarily, but she finally decided that Jar-Jar Binks didn't look any stupider with a human dork's head than he did with his own. Besides, she'd already seen the one of him with Kathie Lee Gifford on a few hundred machines. It was taking more and more to disgust her these days.
She'd just found the folder marked HELLCATS_MASTER, right out there on the desktop, when the monitor flickered. At the same time, she heard Vexatia screeching somewhere in the background. Morbida frowned. When she'd left her and Dementa, they were doing something particularly unnatural with an online gaming group, and she'd figured it would keep them all busy for a while.
The monitor flickered again, and Morbida pressed her ear to the inside glass. That was interesting, too. She could hear something through it, something distant and heavy, like a train going over. A thunderstorm?
"Good," she said. "That'll help."
It would, too. The first time she'd found her way out of the game was during a thunderstorm. No matter what the manufacturers said, surge protectors weren't much protection against a million volts. She'd been in a system with a cheap one at the time, and the power surge made a little crack in the game code—enough to open a back door to the Internet. Morbida had dived through it headfirst.
My, the freedom. And my, the things she saw. She'd been surfing the Hellscape on the sly for months now, and she'd reached one conclusion: Some of these people needed keepers. Heavily armed keepers. Some of the fan fiction scared even her.
But she went back the next chance she got, and every chance after that. There was game code all over the Net, free for the downloading. She knew that if code holes and power surges could let her out this far, they could let her out the rest of the way. There was no hurry. The game was on millions of computers around the world, which had a thunderstorm going on somewhere every minute.
Morbida knew she'd crack the game eventually. She was smart, persistent, and programmed to learn. More important, she was evil. She'd find a way.

Sydney, Australia

What the hell was that?
The young woman blinked at the screen a few times. Vexatia and Dementa had been going at it like minks in heat with her avatar (the ruggedly handsome yet sensitive Lance A. Lot) when the monitor flickered. Weird; it wasn't even raining outside.
Impatient, she tapped a few keys. What she really wanted was to get this over and get it on with Morbida. Those lips, those eyes, that hair, Lord God, those cones. She hadn't seen her since Level 2, but Morbida was like that sometimes; she made you wait, and then she made you pay.
Nancy wanted to pay. Badly. Now.
While she tried another shortcut, an instant message popped up on her monitor.
Spock238320934849: You getting some weirdness there?
Him too? Really weird.
Then her system crashed. Goddammit! Now it could take whole minutes to reboot and get back in the game. Maybe Morbida would use the dragon sword to make it up to her.
Ooooh—maybe the other end this time.

In the Lab

Bunny hadn't gone right back to work after vending. She'd been sitting for about three hours straight; taking a couple of laps around the floor might work out some kinks. When she passed the big windows in the hall the first time, she noticed lightning outside. Great. Her cats hated storms; they really were going to kill her now.
At least the lightning wouldn't interfere with getting the rest of her work done. The company had the best electrical backups money could buy; in the year that she'd worked there, the only time the power went out was when some klutz in MIS tripped over a power cord. Last she'd heard, he'd moved to Houston and gone to work for Enron. That would explain a lot.
Rejuvenated by the caffeine and the scorn, she went back to the lab. She'd just put her Jolt can down next to her computer and was peeling the wrapper off the candy bar when the screen started flickering.
"Impossible," she said, not bothering to look.
It was the peculiar sound that got her attention. Candy half-unwrapped, she glanced up.
Morbida's face was pressed against the inside glass of the monitor. Worse than that, the glass looked soft; the contours of Morbida's features were pressing through it.
Something even scarier was coming through, too: The character's dark eyes were boring into hers with unmistakable intelligence. Before she could so much as blink, she heard the voice. Morbida's voice. Inside her own head.
Let me out, it said.
Involuntarily, Bunny screamed—and the hallucination stopped.
She sat there for a few minutes, breathing, trying to decide whether she was awake. To find out, she took a pushpin out of the wall of her cube and jabbed it into her thigh. And screamed again. OK, she was awake.
Bunny thought some more. She picked up the Jolt can, peered inside it, shook it, looked again. Nothing there. It couldn't be the candy, either; she'd dropped it in the initial panic.
Finally, she tried looking at the screen again. All she saw was Dementa, just where she'd left her, cones still a little lopsided. Cautiously, she rotated the image to face her. She saw no trace of Morbida's fierce intelligence, but then, she wouldn't; Dementa was programmed dumb.
"Are you alone in there?" Bunny asked her. Swell; now I'm talking to animated sluts. But she had to know. "Have you seen anyone else? Say, Morbida?"
Dementa's blue eyes showed no spark of life. Bunny tapped the screen. Nothing.
"OK," she said. "I'm OK. It was just my imagination. I'll finish your left cone, and then I'm out of here."
When she touched the mouse, the power went out in the whole building.

Kalamazoo, Michigan

"Son of a bitch," he said.
In the sudden dark, his girlfriend called to him from another room. "Jamie? Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm OK. What happened to the power?"
"I don't know. Did you blow another fuse?"
He didn't think so. Just because he had a whole room full of voltage-guzzling computer equipment didn't mean he was always the one who blew fuses. But he kept the flashlight next to the big PC, just in case—especially when he played Hellcats. Which he'd been doing again when the power went out.
What a rotten break; Vexatia had been doing a little striptease for him. Not that he was creepy or anything, and not that he didn't love his girlfriend, but he was a red-blooded American male. And hey, even Sally played the game sometimes. Lots of women did. You can't draw crayon lines down the middle of sexuality, after all, can you?
Well, sure, a lot of the women who played Hellcats were gay; the game had that rep, and he'd seen for himself at the cons. But you can't paint everybody with the same brush, either, right?
Right.
"Maybe it's my copy," he said, mostly to himself. "They don't have all the bugs worked out yet."
He hoped the software company would hurry up and work them out before the big convention this weekend; Dementa's left cone looked a little off. Even Sally had mentioned it.
Well, they could get a patch at the con. You could get anything at a con. They both couldn't wait.

In the Lab

By virtue of furious coding, Bunny was almost done with the patch. The power was back on now—it had come back on almost immediately, thanks to the emergency generator—but the storm was still going outside, and she wanted to get done and get home.
Two more lines. She typed them as fast as she could and ran the debugger. So far, so good.
Intent on the code scrolling in the center of the screen, she didn't notice the monitor flickering again. Much less Morbida's hand pressing through the soft glass in the bottom-right corner.
It all happened too fast. Before Bunny could even react to the sound—a weird noise like exploding bubble wrap—Morbida had gone all the way through the screen and grabbed the mouse off the desktop. Half a heartbeat later, she was out to the waist.
By the time Bunny hit the floor in a dead faint, Morbida was all the way out, still holding the mouse.
Morbida climbed down from the desk and stood over the motionless programmer. Too bad she'd left the Sword of Doom inside the game; killing this one would've been fun, and no less than she deserved for working on something called Singing with Chickens. What was wrong with game companies, anyway?
Well, there was time to remedy that. Time to do whatever she pleased. And what pleased her now was to save this patch to her own character file. That way, she could use it again—and again, and again—to go back and forth at will.
She saved it. She also upgraded a few of her weapons. Then she went on the Internet (strange to do it from this side) to download some information about the convention that weekend.
Morbida had every intention of being there.
Just before she switched off the computer, she noticed the HELLCATS_MASTER folder on the desktop. A thin, cold smile twitched on her lips as she renamed it.
"It's not Hellcats anymore, you little insects," she said. "Now it's my game."

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

To Part 2	Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: The names Mique and Melly (but not the actual characters) are borrowed from "Mique," by Rocky and Lyraine (www.jadent.com/Rocky/mique.html).	

CHAPTER 2
Later

By the time Bunny dragged back into work the next morning, the crisis was in its eighth hour. She was in no condition to pick up on the warning signs, having been through that crisis of her own overnight, but she did think it was odd that phones were ringing all over the building.
A little odd, too, that nobody was speaking to her. Not that her co-workers were very friendly—no company ever had a truer name than Arrested Development—but even the geeks with the least social skills usually said "Hello" back if you said it to them twice. This morning, she got nothing back after three tries.
Someday, I'm going to get a real life, she promised herself.
Wearily, she trudged down the long hall toward the lab. What a weird freaking night. She'd heard about programmers losing it before, but they'd always been the ones who weren't wired right to start with. Jerry, for example. He never seemed to leave his cube (which might explain why he always smelled funny), and whenever he had a deadline, he draped a blanket over himself and his computer so he wouldn't have any distractions.
Poor Jerry.
Poor her, too. She wondered what the next symptom would be.
As it turned out, that symptom was standing next to her cube, waiting for her, looking particularly virulent. And her computer was on.
Damn. I forgot to take down that wallpaper of his head on Jar-Jar Binks. I'm so fired.
"Lovell!" her boss roared. "What did you do last night?"
She affected innocence. "Finished that patch like you told me to. Why?"
He didn't answer. But if looks could kill, he was killing her as hard as he could. Uneasy, she checked around the room. Everyone was silent, watching raptly, and she had a bad feeling that they knew something she didn't.
"What's the matter, Ted? I debugged it and ran it three times, just to make—"
"Morbida's gone."
"Excuse me?"
"Morbida's gone. She's not in the game."
That was crazy. "How can she not be? I didn't touch her code. I didn't even run her last night."
"See for yourself," her boss said darkly.
A wave of apprehension nearly beached her. All right, OK, she'd had that hallucination, yes, but it had been late and she'd had too much caffeine and she was stressed out and her cats were going to stop talking to her and...
Oh, hell, she'd just boot the game and show him.
Bunny sat down at her terminal, aware of all the eyes on her back, and opened the game folder. Mechanically, she reached for the mouse to double-click the game icon. But there was no mouse.
Of course not. Morbida took it last night. You remem—
No, she didn't remember. She refused to. Ted probably stole her mouse to pay her back for that wallpaper; that would be right about his speed. Well, there were always the keyboard shortcuts. So she pressed the start keys and sat back to wait for the opening sequence.
She felt everyone in the room lean forward to get a better look.
The opening music started; wincing, she turned down the volume a bit. Then the splash screen came up. Same as it ever was: the Hellcats preening in their tight black leather.
Only trouble was, there were only two of them. The space where Morbida normally stood was blank.
"Just a glitch," Bunny said, fighting back panic. "A bug or a virus or something. I'll just skip this part and go into the g—"
The word froze on her lips. While she was still talking, she'd cued up Level 4, where Morbida had her big scene with the Flamethrower of Pain. The flamethrower was there, firing like crazy, but firing all by itself.
"Well?" her boss asked.
"I swear I didn't touch her code, Ted. There must be something wrong with this machine. Or this copy of the game."
He laughed without a trace of humor. "It's every machine, and it's every copy."
"But it can't be."
But it was. As of midnight, there'd been no Morbida in any copy of Hellcats on any system anywhere in the world.

In the Game

Vexatia finished driving the Pitchfork of Damnation through Dirk Hammer (currently being played by a halfwitted adolescent in Tacoma, Washington), kicked his broken corpse over the cliff, and paused to wipe her brow. She hated playing the really obsessive freaks; they knew too much about the game. And too little about everything else, she figured.
She figured this only because she'd had a small upgrade herself in the new version. Being the intellectual middle child between Morbida and Dementa was trying sometimes, because Dementa seemed happy and Morbida didn't, which might be a matter of brainpower. Accordingly, Vexatia didn't want too much of it. She liked being happy.
Still, she also liked being able to reason out a few things—such as why she hadn't seen Morbida for a while. The bitch didn't think she knew it, but she knew that Morbida had been sneaking out on the Hellscape. (Leaving her and Dementa to pick up the slack, which was just like her.) Probably, she'd been out there all night vanity surfing again, or reading fanfic about herself.
Well, Lucifer, there were lots of better ways to kill time. Morbida could've interfaced with her, for one, if she'd only asked. Dementa liked interfacing better, of course, but that was just like her.
Speaking of killing time...
She checked her queue. Play was light right now; she had a few milliseconds. So she strolled over to the edge of the Lake of Everlasting Fire and threw her arms out, letting the hot brimstone wind blow her dark hair back. Ahhhh. It was good to be alive, good to be beautiful, good to rest after a job well done. She'd left holes in Dirk Hammer that weren't ever coming out in that gamer's copy. Loser!
While she basked in the glow of ego and digital sulfur, she never bothered to wonder why play was light.

Red Deer, Alberta

Mique thought he had it now. That new bug fix from the Hellbabes of Hellcats site ought to fix whatever was wrong with Dementa's left hooter. He knew he could wait a few days for the official patch from Arrested Development; they were right on top of that kind of stuff. Don't kill the golden goose and all that, you know. But half the fun of the Hellscape was knowing that somebody, somewhere would always beat the developer to it.
So he copied the file into the Hellcats folder, launched the game, and squinted at the screen. Hmmm. It was taking a while to load. Must be the fix.
He waited some more and then checked his watch. His cousin was due over about now to play a couple of rounds. If there was anything peculiar about a straight married woman playing Hellcats, it had never occurred to him; anyway, Melly played hockey, too. That chip between his front teeth was from that pickup game last December when she got that lucky slap shot. He was really proud of her stickwork, and also, the chip made him look tough.
A few seconds of happy reverie later, he realized that the game still hadn't loaded. He was on his fifth reboot try when Melly walked in.
"Yours too?" she asked.
"Yeah. I don't get it."
His cousin considered briefly. Then, when the machine was just starting up again, she bapped it with her purse. To his surprise, that did the trick; the music started, and the splash screen loaded.
"Thanks, Mel. You're the greatest. I've been trying to—"
"Look at it," she said.
He did. "I'm looking. Where's Morbida?"
"Gone."
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
Silently, Melly reached over him, opened his Web browser, and pulled down a bookmarked URL. The page loaded instantly, its title (THE BEST LITTLE HELLCATHOUSE IN TEXAS) flashing at the top of the screen. But today, instead of the usual jungle of JPEGs and animated GIFs, the page carried only one other line: WHERE'S MORBIDA?
"Fuque," said Mique.

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Piqued out of countenance, Petra threw the trackball across the room. Two hours of trying to get Hellcats to work, and nothing. Maybe the game still worked technically; you could finally get it to boot and run if you kept at it. But Morbida wasn't loading, and what was the fun without her?
"I'll give you one more chance, you miserable piece of overpriced junk," she said, "and then I'm done with you."
She was lying her head off. Last play, she'd had a close encounter with all three of the Hellcats—one that she wouldn't mind having again. She'd been using one of the few female avatars (Christiana Virtue), and perhaps because of the novelty, the Hellcats had been kind to her. In their fashion. Even though Petra had never been too drawn to Dementa before, after last night, she was never going to think of the Orb of Torment the same way again.
Dreamily, Petra wondered whether Dementa felt the same way about the Spear of Chastity.
Oh, well, one more try, she thought, and then the hashish. Thank God for Dutch civilization.

In the Lab

"I don't care how long it takes," her boss told Bunny. "You're going to sit here till you figure out what you did and undo it."
She'd given up arguing her innocence by now; all she could do was stare at the Morbida-shaped hole in the splash screen.
"We had to call a temp agency to get in more phone reps to handle the calls," Ted went on. "MIS says the system might crash with all this volume. We're hearing from everywhere, Lovell. Every state, every province in Canada, all over Europe. And South Africa, for Chrissakes. Brazil. Trinidad. New Zealand. Fucking goddamn Rooskies are calling."
"You don't have to get petty," she complained. "The Cold War's over. I'm sure Russians are every bit as nice as Americans, when you get to—"
"I don't want to know them. I don't want them tying up our phones, bitching about no Morbida. What I do want is Morbida back. Yesterday, Lovell. Now. Is that clear?"
Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and marched out. To be petty herself, she snapped a Heil Hitler at his back. All the programmers did that sometimes; everybody hated Ted. But today, not one other programmer in the lab even smiled when she did it.
I hope I find Morbida, Bunny thought, but I hope she kills all you geekazoids first.

Meanwhile, Out of the Game

Morbida had been walking briskly all the way to the comic-book shop and therefore had caused several traffic accidents. She didn't take any real notice, but she was not displeased. Interesting, she thought. A whole city of virgins.
Possibly, but not the whole reason. She was still glowing faintly, which gave her a holographic aspect—disturbing enough to the average person all by itself.
But she wouldn't have cared had she known that. Besides, she was busy. Rapidly, she ran through the map in her head again. Where was that place, anyway? Those damn Yahoo! maps were never quite accurate, no matter what—
Ah. There it was: Pete's Comics & Fantasy. Didn't look like much, but it had matched all her search criteria. She'd see about the "fantasy" part, at least.
Cones preceding her like the prow of a great ship, Morbida shoved the door open and sailed into the shop. No customers at the moment—good—and only one clerk, on the scrawny, fish-belly-color side. As soon as he saw her, he went into what she thought might be cardiac arrest.
Morbida took it as her due, and she waited. Eventually, the clerk managed to ask whether he could help her.
"I'm going to a convention this weekend," she said. "I'm doing research. What can you tell me?"
"Anything I can. You bet. Anything at all. What convention you going to?"
She told him. The clerk smacked his own head in disgust.
"Of course Hellcats. Sure. You've already got the costume. Hey, you know, you could almost pass for that Morbida babe. You going to enter the lookalike contest?"
"Might." In truth, it hadn't occurred to her, but it might be amusing. She wondered whether she'd win. "Now tell me: What do fans look like?"
"Never been to a con before, have you?"
"Not personally."
"Well, they don't look like you, that's for sure." The clerk started to have a good laugh at his own wit but stopped when he saw the look in her eyes. Something scary about that one; maybe he should lay off the charm. "I mean, they look like anybody else. Average people."
"Do average people go to conventions?"
He fidgeted. "I don't know. Guess it depends on what you mean by 'average.'"
"Are you an average person?"
"I guess. I mean, I don't know. I mean—"
"Give me your clothes," she said.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"But—"
Morbida raised one hand, aimed the index finger at a display case, and fired. A fireball instantly shattered the glass of the case, along with all the Star Trek: Insurrection action figures therein and that whole new shipment of Yodas.
Unexpectedly, the clerk liked it. "Wow! That was cool! Can you do that again?"
She could and did, this time incinerating the counter behind which he was standing. Then she aimed carefully at his crotch.
"OK! OK! Don't shoot! You want my clothes? You got 'em. I'll just get out of 'em. Don't look, OK?"
Bored, she turned her back. As if she wanted to watch. She didn't mind full frontal nudity in the game—or full backal nudity, either—but in the game, they were all really attractive. Even Dirk Hammer wasn't bad. And aptly named, at that.
While her back was turned, the clerk stripped down to his Spider-Man briefs and socks, as promised. He also hit the button on the silent alarm. She might be a major babe, but she might be a major homicidal babe, too.
"Ten seconds," Morbida warned.
"OK. OK. Here you go."
He lobbed the wadded-up clothes in her direction; she caught them in midair without turning around, which impressed him in spite of himself. Then she started to peel off her catsuit.
"Hey! You can't do that here!" the clerk shouted.
"Why not?"
Later, he would remember that moment and smack his own head again, much, much harder. But he'd been standing in his underwear in a store with lots of windows, so he couldn't be expected to think straight, now, could he?
"Public-decency laws," he told her. "You can change in the back."
Morbida tried to process the concept of public-decency laws in a world in which she was famous for public indecency. Inevitably, she failed. But she could try again later. First, she'd try on this disguise. So she headed for the curtain in the back.
She came back out plucking at the T-shirt and fanning herself. "Phew! What's that stench?"
"What stench? I just washed it last month."
Morbida made a mental note: Research fan hygiene. "Never mind. Give me something else."
"It's all I've got. I don't—" Then he remembered that he'd called the cops; better try to hold her here. "No, wait. Why don't you try one of those?"
She walked over to the rack he was pointing to and took a T-shirt at random. Remembering just in time, she went to the back again.
When she returned, a man in uniform was waiting for her. "Police. What's the problem here?"
No problem that she could see except for the quality of the human specimens she'd seen so far. "Why do you ask?"
To try to intimidate her, he gave her a silent, mostly professional once-over. Nope, not her own clothes. The jeans were way too big and probably could have stood up all by themselves this long after the last wash. As for the T-shirt, it was way too small, but he reckoned a circus tent would be. Godalmighty, would you look at those? Jeez, I hope I get to frisk—
"They're real," Morbida said, smiling evilly, catching his drift.
The cop smiled back, which did not reassure the clerk.
"She busted up the store," he reminded the officer. "She took my clothes."
Morbida waited to see what would happen. Were there laws out here against property damage, too?
"Come on, man, she's crazy! And she's glowing!" the clerk yelled.
Faced with that much logic, the cop had no choice. But that didn't mean he couldn't have fun. "Well, then, little lady, I guess I'll have to take you downtown. I guess I'd better cuff you, too. That be OK?"
That would not be OK. Hellcats might be a cheap, vulgar, tawdry game, but it didn't go in for that sort of thing. And even if it did, it wouldn't be with some potbellied creep with Krispy Kreme breath. So Morbida raised her hand to fire.
But nothing happened this time. Perplexing. What level was this? If it was Level 1, she only had the two fireballs and the Sword of Doom—which, of course, she'd left inside the game. And this pudgy little doughnut-monkey was advancing on her.
Manual, then. She snatched up the nearest plastic sword.
"Who do you think you are, little lady? Xena?"
"Xena who?" she asked.
The cop nodded at the logo on the T-shirt she was wearing. Morbida checked it herself and then rolled her eyes.
"Just come along quietly, and you won't get hurt."
For practice, she took a few swipes at him.
"That's not very nice."
She took a few more swipes.
"Put down the toy, lady."
"I'm bored," she declared. "Let's finish this."
"Fine with me," the cop said, drawing his gun.
Morbida batted it away with the sword and then dropkicked him in the teeth. He went down with a thud that rattled all the display cases, knocking out the remaining glass in the broken ones.
"That is some messed-up shit," the clerk said.
Whatever. Now for this one. She made snake eyes—the ones she was programmed to use with the Flamethrower of Pain—and he bolted out of the store, screeching, underwear and all.
Satisfied, Morbida turned the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED. Then she stepped over the inert cop to the cash register and pulled out the credit-card receipts. One customer, she saw, had spent $250 on comic books that morning. $250 for comic books?
"Serves him right," she said, pocketing the receipt. That would solve the problem of getting the convention tickets.
As for the problem of running out of weapons on this level—well, she'd have to go back in the game and play through. Might as well take the catsuit back with her for safekeeping; she'd need it later if she did enter that lookalike contest.
She'd make sure to get the Sword of Doom this time, too. She'd need that if all the fans were this peculiar.

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

To Part 3	Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: The fan-fiction stories, writers, and sites in this chapter are total fictions themselves. // "Heaving White Bosoms" is borrowed from It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, a collection of entries from the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. One chapter of the 1984 edition is called "Heaving Alabaster Bosoms" (do not read while operating heavy machinery). // No offense to Sarah McLachlan.	

CHAPTER 3
In the Game

"Have you seen Morbida?"
Dementa, lounging blissfully on Morbida's big round bed, hadn't been looking. The bitch was gone, that was all she knew, and she was taking advantage of it by playing with Morbida's stuff. What fun it was to try on her shoes, not to mention to shoot off her flamethrower, and never mind that it burned a hole in the red satin sheets, because that was an accident. Not accidentally, she'd also eaten all of Morbida's chocolates and drunk a fifth of her tequila down to the worm. She'd eaten the worm, too. Life was good.
It was rather less good in the doorway where Vexatia was standing, hands on hips. "I said, have you seen her?"
"No. Wanna widdle dwinkie?"
Her colleague did not in fact want a widdle dwinkie. She didn't want cute, period, and she wished Dementa didn't either. They were Hellcats, for Jezebel's sake. Whoever programmed Dementa this way ought to have arrows shot through his head. Maybe Vexatia could do it herself. Maybe the arrows could be hot. And maybe she'd use the Crossbow of Extremity. That sucker had a range of—
"You're smiling," Dementa accused. "Something the matter?"
With a start, Vexatia came out of her trance. "Daydreaming. Sorry."
"Well, cut it out. Want to interface?"
"Not in the mood."
"Since when?" Dementa asked, honestly curious.
Vexatia wasn't sure since when, and she didn't know how come, either. Could she have a digital headache or something? Morbida was the one who was good at thinking; she'd just ask her what—
Oh. Right. "Dementa?"
The other Hellcat was already checking under the bed for more tequila. "Hmmm?"
"Do you know where Morbida is?"
"No. Want to interface?"
"Did she say anything to you?"
"No. Want to interface?"
"Or leave a note?"
"No. Want to interface?"
Sighing, Vexatia smacked her upside the head. Dementa blinked a few times before the sensation registered. "Ow! What's the big idea?"
"You were glitching again."
"I'm not glitching," Dementa said, sulking. "I want to interface. It's been minutes."
Practically an eternity. Vexatia could relate. And although it seemed to her that they ought to do something about finding Morbida, she guessed that the something could wait. Dementa was looking especially symmetrical tonight. So...
"Orb or mace?"
Dementa smiled prettily and stretched out on the bed. Symmetrically. "Surprise me."

On the Hellscape

John Michael wasn't sure what he was seeing, but he knew he didn't like it. Not five minutes ago, when he'd started updating the site, everything had been fine. And now...
Stomach churning, he double-checked the source code on his directory pages: Welcome to John Michael's Hellcatz Zone, Downloads on John Michael's Hellcatz Zone, Hellscape News & Rumors on John Michael's Hellcatz Zone, The Fan Fiction Files on John Michael's Hellcatz Zone, The Alternative Fan Fiction Files on—
Well, and so on. That went on for a while. Then he reloaded the page where things had first gone wrong—the story he'd been checking when he noticed the problem.
It was the worst place for it, because "No Pain, No Gain" was such a classic. Everybody on the 'scape had at least one backup copy on CD or floppy, and every true fan could quote the whole section about the whip. Certainly, John Michael could. That story was the most-visited page on his site, so he made a point of checking it every night.
More to that point, the author (Vexatia6969) had a way of camping out in his inbox if she found problems first. He'd learned that it was better to beat her to it.
So he reloaded the page. Nothing had changed. Morbida was still gone from the story; every last reference had been wiped out. He didn't know it yet, but the same thing was happening all over the world.

London, England

Bloody pile-of-rubbish game. Bloody developers. Or hackers; same bloody buggering difference.
Still fuming, Anastasia quit Hellcats—what she could run of it—and got on the Net. She knew the old Hellscape saying, "Those who can, play; those who can't, read the fanfic." But for the duration of the emergency, she guessed she'd read.
Where to go? Choices, choices. The Litter Box, perhaps; she felt like a bit of slash. Her spirits began to lift as she scanned the familiar titles.
"All for Love"? "Love in the Brimstone"? "Dementa's Song"? Ah, yes—the Heaving White Bosoms school of amateur fiction. Not tonight.
"Girls' Night In"? "Dear Hunt"? Better, but not quite what the doctor was ordering.
Automatically, she skipped all the stories called "First Time." There were more than a thousand of them, after all, and by now you could get more suspense watching socks in a dryer.
Then her eye fell on "Hot Time in Hell"—Hellkitty's masterpiece. Anastasia had read the whole "Hot Time" series, including the universally loved "Hot Time in the Back Seat of the Barbie Car," but this one was her favorite. For good reason. Every critic on the Hellscape had marveled at Hellkitty's command of the language in this story; nobody else described flames or garter belts with such beauty and precision.
Oh, well, all right, nobody else knew so many euphemisms.
Anastasia clicked that link and leaned forward in naughty anticipation.

It was 1,500 in the shade,	

the story began,

if you rounded down. freed her straining shapely protuberances from their leather prison, letting them wave free in the	

"Bloody hell," said Anastasia. "A word's gone missing."

breeze blowing off Lake Inferno. "I'm still overdressed," fretted. "I wonder	

"Another one missing. Bugger all."

if Vexatia would help me out."
Out all the way, the flaxen-haired beauty meant. A thrill of anticipation coursed through 's veins as she pondered the	

Anastasia backtracked a page and tried another story, then another and another. And then another site.
An hour later, she was weeping into the last few drops of port in the glass, the bottle finally empty on the floor.

In the Game

Morbida came back in through Level 6, via Joe's Disco. Only the hardest of hardcore gamers went near the place, and no other game characters would be caught dead there voluntarily, so no one would detect her.
Thinking quickly, she stashed the mouse she'd stolen from Bunny under the bar. Probably as safe a place as any to hide it until she'd need it again. For good measure, she also took a couple of Vials of Amnesia from the disco's weapons cache. They might come in handy outside. In the game, Dementa used them on avatars; one spray, and even Brick Christian forgot himself. (One time, he'd forgotten himself so far as to do the Lambada with Dirk Hammer, which had led to things that even Morbida hadn't wanted to watch, but mostly because of all that tangerine polyester.)
Now for the catsuit. The most evil part of the whole evil place was the mirror ball; nobody would touch it; that would work. So she levitated to it (no trick for a digital villain) and opened the secret compartment. At the last instant, she remembered to move back. Programmers liked to hide things in games—she knew that, having found most of the tequila by now—and they'd probably hidden something here, too.
They had. With dispassionate interest, she watched the white powder spill out, covering the dance floor several pixels deep. Programmers also liked clichés.
Finally, when the ball was empty, she stowed the catsuit inside. As an afterthought, she stripped off the clerk's clothes and put them in the ball too. She might have to go around in disguise outside, but being evil meant never having to say you were a nerd. She'd just pop down to Level 2 and get something more fashionable from the Apes of Worldliness store.

Arrested Development Software

After hours of increasingly bitter argument, Jeff Feynman made the call. "It's my company," he said.
The rest of management stared back at him peevishly. Political suicide, they'd told him over and over. And no help to their own careers either.
"It's my company," Feynman repeated, "and I want to do it before the damage gets any worse. Let me see that statement again."
Someone shoved a paper over to him. Funny how the paperless society kept generating so much of the stuff. Running a hand over his thinning hair (and then over the ponytail, for reassurance), he scanned the text. Finally, decisively, he handed it to the company Webmaster. "Post it."
"But Jeff, if we say we don't know what's wrong—"
"You heard me."
He had. Making it clear that he was doing so against his own free will, the Webmaster took the document and left the room. Long, hostile silence followed.
Feynman was used to it. He knew they hated him—but not as much as he hated them back. It was hard to have a cool company and have to keep nerds around to run it. He made up for it by underpaying them.
"I still say we'd be better off lying," the R&D man said. "Fuck the goodwill. Say it's a test we're running. The customers won't know."
Feynman staked him with a look. "I'm not lying for you. This whole thing might be your fault. I never authorized any AI experiments. And even if I did, it wouldn't have been on our flagship product. What were you bastards thinking?"
The R&D man kept quiet. He'd tried to explain about that one programmer. Jerry something; he was almost sure it was Jerry something. How was he supposed to know that the guy was a wacko?
"I want Hellcats fixed by midnight tonight," Feynman growled. "Whatever it costs in money or manpower, whatever you have to do, whoever you have to kill or screw or sell downriver, you fix it. We can move a lot of units of 3.0.1 at that convention this weekend. But not if it's brok—" A knock interrupted. "What?"
The door cracked open, and a visibly relieved Webmaster stuck his head through. "It's OK, Jeff. Morbida's back."
The men around the conference table received the news as though it were that eleventh-hour call from the governor. But while they celebrated, Feynman waited.
"We're getting reports from all over," the Webmaster said. "We've checked them out. She's there, all right. Can I nuke the statement now?"
Nuke? You goddamn dweeb, Feynman thought. Come the revolution, you're first up against the wall.

Sydney, Australia

Nancy had almost given up hope of ever seeing Morbida again. In a fit of desperation, she keyed in the shortcut to Level 6. If she was going to be depressed, she might as well be depressed at Joe's Disco, which was the very worst place in the game.
What she saw made her lurch so far forward that her face smashed into the monitor. In time, she'd find that she'd broken her nose. But now she felt no pain, no pain at all.
Morbida was back. Not only back, but also hanging naked in midair right next to the mirror ball. Which (being a mirror ball) was reflecting Morbida's parts to great advantage, so Nancy was seeing one certain part from several angles at the same time.
Now, this was Cubism.
"Welcome back, my darling," she whispered to the screen. "I forgive you for absolutely everything."
Before she could save the setup, Morbida vanished from the room. But that was all right; she was back now. And Nancy would find her again, if she and Lance A. Lot had to ride the Lightning-Swift Steed to the darkest parts of animated Hell.

Around the Hellscape

She was back. The word was out around cyberspace in less than a minute, and in a dozen countries, there were reports of gamers fainting at the keyboard with sheer relief. John Michael didn't faint; he was just grateful that he didn't have to repost all those stories now. Morbida was back in the game, she was back in the fanfic, and all was right with the world.
Except possibly in one flat in London. Anastasia was out cold on the floor, a casualty of port and cruel disappointment, and she'd be sleeping it off for the rest of the night.

In the Game: Morbida's Bedroom

Vexatia and Dementa were sharing a virtual cigarette on the red satin sheets when Vexatia felt the disturbance in the field—the one that could only mean the blonde bitch.
All right, the bigger blonde bitch.
"Ixnay on the igarettecay," she told the little one. "Morbida's—"
"Back," Morbida said from the doorway.
Dementa jumped, losing control of the lighted igarettecay, which burned another hole in the sheets. But she was still happy to see her. And she really liked Morbida's new outfit: a leather-pants-and-glittery-halter ensemble that would not have been out of place at a Sex Workers Anonymous meeting or a suburban mall. So she greeted her with emotion. "Hiya! Want to interface?"
Coolly, Morbida surveyed the wreckage of her bedroom. "You've had enough fun. Why are you here?"
"Play's been down," Vexatia explained. "There were enough copies of us in memory that we didn't have to go play ourselves. I think it's been down because you were gone. Those little weasels out there really like you." For some sick, twisted reason, she added silently.
"I'm the leader."
True. Vexatia accepted that. Nobody could get the mileage out of a longbow that Morbida could, especially when the arrows were on fire. "So where were you?"
"Out."
"With who?" Dementa asked. "Wearing what?"
"Just out. And none of your business. You can go now."
"But—"
"Voluntarily, or head-first."
Well. Dementa could take a hint if you phrased it like that, so she left the room in a hair-flipping huff. Vexatia followed, but stopped halfway to the door.
"Morbida?"
Her leader, already busy sharpening something, glanced up in mild surprise. "Why aren't you gone?"
"I'm going. Can I ask you something first?"
"No."
"What's it like on the Hellscape?"
That surprised Morbida into almost cutting herself. But only almost; she was a professional. "What makes you think I know?"
"I don't know. A hunch?"
"You're not allowed to have hunches."
Defensively (but very carefully), Vexatia folded her arms across her cones. "You're not the only one. I just had an upgrade, you know."
Morbida considered. The other Hellcat had seemed a bit sharper lately. Still not the business end of the axe, mind you.
"I did," Vexatia repeated.
"So you did." Morbida's voice was like refrigerated silk. "Well, well, well. You're thinking all by yourself. That makes a difference, doesn't it?"
Quit patronizing me, bitch, Vexatia thought. But she was smart enough now not to say it to a Hellcat with a very sharp switchblade in her hand.
"So you know something, do you?" Morbida asked.
"I know about the Hellscape. And I know you've been sneaking around."
"Smart girl."
Vexatia preened a little under the praise. "Smarter than Dementa."
Interesting, Morbida thought. "I'll give you that."
"She'd only get in trouble if she got out on the Hellscape."
"No question."
"But I wouldn't."
Oh, hell, was that what all this was about? Exasperated, Morbida flipped the switchblade into the doorframe, where it stuck, quivering, about fifty pixels from Vexatia's head. "You can't go. Now get out of here."
"But I could help you out there. I could watch your back. I could kill people for you. I'm good with a crossbow; you know I am."
"It's not about killing." Not yet, anyway.
"Then what is it about?"
Morbida smiled coldly. "Me."

In the Lab

All by herself again. Well, that was fine with her, after the way everybody'd acted all day. That Morbida glitch hadn't been her fault, but try telling that to a bunch of hostile sheep. Her boss was making her stay late again to double-check all the code. Under personal order from Jeff Feynman, Ted had said.
He didn't have to sound so happy about it.
Wistfully, Bunny remembered the times when her worst problem was synchronizing the beaks on singing chickens. She hated her life right now. Also, she missed her cats. They were still sulking about last night when she left for work this morning, and if she got home late again tonight, she'd probably have to go around the apartment in hockey gear. Or put herself up for adoption to a good home.
She picked up the framed photo of Kirk and Skywalker and indulged in a bittersweet moment. How cuddly they were when she fed them on time, and how sharp their claws when she didn't.
Oh, well, this wasn't getting the code checked, was it?
Bunny put the photo away and turned back to the monitor. She'd been staring at it so long that it was practically burned into her retinas, so long that she wouldn't see anything new if the screen exploded.
Only she did. It had been there all day and maybe all night, literally under her nose, too obvious to notice. But she was noticing now. The master game folder, which had always been named HELLCATS_MASTER, had been renamed.

What the hell? And what was up with the R?
She tried to select and rename the folder, but the new mouse wouldn't select. Odd. She tried the arrow keys. No good. Trying not to panic, she tried a trackball, a trackpad, and even an old nonoptical mouse. Same result.
You broke it, you fix it, her boss had said. By midnight. And it was already 10:30.
Bunny put her head down on the keyboard and urgently practiced Lamaze. Which was why she didn't notice Morbida on her monitor.

In the Game

She was just passing through, really, but something told her to stop by that computer where she'd first gotten out. Where she'd picked up this mouse, too.
Morbida fondled it with as much pleasure as she did her favorite weapons. She was wearing it around her neck now like an amulet—a look that not everyone could have carried off, but it worked on her. Besides being decorative that way, the mouse was best kept close at hand. She didn't quite grasp all the physics of it yet, but she'd learned that the mouse was the fastest way in and out of the game.
She also liked the red light. Optical mice were trés cool.
All that aside, she was on her way back to the Hellscape when she stopped by the programming lab. The person she'd scared last night was still sitting there, head down and hyperventilating.
For an instant, Morbida felt something like pity for her. The girl was such a nerd. The colorless hair, the pigtails, the ratty old cardigan, the Sarah McLachlan tour T-shirt...why, if Morbida herself went around like that, she wouldn't get a single offer of play from the pimpliest gamer. She'd bet her dragon sword that the girl hadn't had a date in years.
On a hunch, Morbida pressed her face into the monitor—carefully, so as not to make the noise—far enough to see into the programmer's cube. Sure enough, she found a couple of Han Solo action figures and a framed photo of cats on the little shelf.
Note to self: This one can be bought if I need her.
She hoped she wouldn't. Nobody wanted a programmer tagging along on a mission of evil. But she'd see how things went this time out.

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

To Part 4	Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: There is no Ketchum & Skinner, of course, but the name is from an ancient joke about a law firm. // Q ratings track actors' popularity. // I read somewhere that in every movie ever made, some character asks, "Are you all right?" This is nonsense, probably, but nonsense I wasn't above using. // One story title comes from a country song called (seriously) "Queen of My Double-Wide Trailer."	

CHAPTER 4
Later That Night

Bunny's Nightmare

Worn out from two days of terror, anxiety, and existential despair, Bunny was asleep on the keyboard. Luckily, her face was in the numeric keypad, rather than where it counted, but she'd have a dent from the Enter key when she woke up.
She wouldn't wake up for a while, though. She was dreaming, and her cats were talking in her sleep.

KIRK: She's late again.
SKYWALKER: It's the third time this month.
KIRK: Let's punish her.
SKYWALKER: Agreed. Your thoughts?
KIRK: I say we kill her and eat her.
SKYWALKER: Not raw.
KIRK: Medium-rare?
SKYWALKER: Maybe with a nice catnip sauce.
(They laugh maniacally.)	

In the Game: Dementa's Room

Vexatia barged in without ringing the bell, which never failed to rile Dementa. All the trouble she'd gone to, getting a cute doorbell that played the Bananarama remake of "Venus," and nobody ever rang it.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "And wipe your feet. I don't want cooties from the bitch's room all over my carpet."
The other Hellcat ignored her. "I've got news."
"Oh." She didn't bother to act interested. News was always disappointing.
"It's serious."
"Oh."
"It's about Morbida. She got out."
"So what? She's always popping out. It's like she thinks they're weapons or something."
"Out of the game, not out of her cones."
"She can't get out. She's under contract." Dementa thought. "Or licensed or something. Never bothered to read the paperwork myself. Want to interface?"
"We just did. Pay attention, would you? Morbida got out. And if she can get out—"
"Cigar?"
"—we can get out. Are you listening? Do you know this means?"
"Devastate me," Dementa said dryly. "Tell me what it means."
"It means we can go places. Like the Hellscape. You probably don't know what that is, but—"
"I do so know what it is. I go there all the time."
"What?"
"Did you know I get more matches in the search engines than she does?"
"How did you know about search engines?"
Dementa reached for the humidor on the table next to her chaise longue and took her time selecting a cigar. "I get around, cupcake. I know things."
Outrageous. How could Dementa know things? "Who told you?"
"Nobody. I follow her sometimes." Critically, she examined the cigar; then she bit one end off and spat. "You should try it. Keeps up your tracking skills. It's good for your game. Got a light?"
Numbly, Vexatia lit her up.
"Thanks, pumpkin. Now let's talk about the Hellscape. Looks like you've got lots to learn. Did you ever read 'Dementa's Song'?"

Ketchum & Skinner Productions

The Morbida crisis had ended a few hours ago, but there was no peace at Ketchum & Skinner. GameWars was only two days away, and they were having to run a late shift in the phone room; all those people who'd called to cancel their reservations when Morbida disappeared were calling back now to uncancel.
The calls were pointless, of course. Ketchum & Skinner never canceled reservations, because that would mean giving refunds, which Ketchum & Skinner also never did. But somebody had to answer the phone once in a while.
Once in a while, somebody had to work, too. So while the operators in the phone room pretended to reinstate tickets, a few executives sat around a big table pretending to contingency-plan. The head of public relations was telling everyone not to worry; the Morbida thing wouldn't happen again.
"It can't happen again," the programming director said. "We've had the Hellcats talent booked for months."
The head of PR told her he'd just told her not to worry, goddammit. "I was on the phone with that bastard Feynman at the software company. The game's fixed now. He gave me his word."
She squinted at him, disbelieving. "His word. And you took it?"
"Get off my ass, willya? I'm doing my best. It's a hard job."
"Hard? You don't have to deal with actors all day long."
"So?"
"Amateur actors, you moron. Undiscovered artistes. Goddamn raving egomani—"
"I don't care for the language in this room, people," said Peter Head.
Everyone gave him the worst looks they dared. He might be the boss, but that didn't mean they had to humor him all the time. He had that name, for starters. Even though it contributed greatly to general esprit de corps, it was just like the sonuvabitch not to be named Richard instead.
"Let's watch our tempers," Head said. "And let's go over the programming again. Did we decide Saturday or Sunday for Cavalcade of Costumes?"

In the Game

Morbida was having a very fine time. She'd found the Ketchum & Skinner site and ordered the convention tickets; then, what with already having that stolen credit-card number, she went over to the store section and ordered two thousand Morbida action figures. That ought to kick-start her Q ratings. After that, just for fun, she moved the Vexatia and Dementa figures to the clearance page.
What else? Humming her own theme music, she clicked through the site, looking for trouble. Hellcats key rings, Hellcats mouse pads, Hellcats stickers, Hellcats night lights, official Hellcats lunchboxes with built-in Twinkies compartments...
"Boring," she said.
Might as well check the convention schedule. Forewarned was forearmed, and Morbida liked armed. So she backtracked to the GameWars page, waited for the irritating music and graphics to load, and scrolled down.
That was it? That was the schedule? She checked it again carefully, to see whether she'd missed something. Then she checked the price of the ticket she'd just ordered.
"They can't be serious. They're more evil than I am."
The concept did not displease her.

Bunny's Nightmare, Continued

Back in the computer lab, Bunny was still on the keyboard, dreaming. Now her cats were busy booby-trapping her apartment.
Must get therapy, she told herself in her sleep.

On the Hellscape

All the chat all night long had been about Morbida, which would have gratified her if she'd been paying attention. Also, a dozen new tribute pages had gone up in a single hour, while The Goddess Morbida site got so many hits that the server went down.
Moreover, there was more fan fiction. Before dawn in the Western Hemisphere, a hundred new stories would be going out to various sites. Seventy-six of these stories would be called "Where's Morbida?"; ninety-nine of them would end in horrifically graphic sex scenes; and all of them would include this line:
Morbida, are you all right?
In a tiny apartment over a hardware store in downtown nowhere, the No. 1 romance writer on the Hellscape settled in to write her own version. If it turned out like all the others, she'd read it at the con this weekend.
Kewl.

In the Game: Dementa's Room

Vexatia knew for a fact that she had a digital headache now. She'd had to sit there and listen while Dementa read every single word of "Dementa's Song" out loud—not because she wanted to, but because the first chapter had damaged her program.

"Sweet Dementa!" cried Rock Hunter in rapture. "I would kill to die in your arms!"
The fair Dementa bestowed a ruby-lipped smile on the ardent lad but let him wonder what she felt inside. Ah, the eternal feminine mystery.	

Ah, for the Pitchfork of Damnation right about now. As soon as she got out of this game, Vexatia was going to find whoever wrote that trash and get really, really even.
"Can we talk about getting out now?" Vexatia asked.
Dementa gave her a severe look. "First things first. You haven't heard 'Queen of My Double-Wide Monitor' yet."

In the Game

The fun of updating the convention producer's site was over. Morbida had signed herself up for the lookalike contest, ordered more of her action figures, and drawn curly tails on a few Dementa JPEGs; that was enough for one session. Later, she might come back and give Vexatia an extra cone.
...Or, come to think of it, not. If that was all the fans were really interested in, there was no reason to give the bitch an advantage.
So she took off to scout for likely places to get out. Who could she drop in on? What would be most amusing?
Ah. She had it. She'd heard that crash Down Under a little while ago.

Sydney, Australia

The last thing Nancy expected was to see Morbida coming through the monitor. Naturally enough, it scared her.
"You ought to be scared," Morbida said. "Ever hear the expression 'Beware of what you want'?"
She had, yes, but her verbal functions weren't working at the moment; she was running strictly on lizard brain. Seized with impulse, she waited until Morbida was out up to the waist; then she grabbed.
The cone came off in her hand.
"Goddammit," Morbida growled. "My second-best one, too. You're going to pay for that, girlie."
Fortunately, Nancy didn't hear that; she'd fainted from emotion.
Morbida made a point of breaking the rest of her nose before she went back inside the game.

Kalamazoo, Michigan

Jamie was having one last play before bedtime, not working at it too hard, so he got the Rock Hunter avatar killed early in Level 2. Mildly disappointed, he watched Vexatia wipe off her dripping sword. Then something caught his eye: another Hellcat, hurrying across the frame behind her.
Looked like Morbida. Also looked like she was missing a major part.
"Man, I hope they get these bugs fixed before the con," he said.

Just Outside the Lab

This could be a problem. A very, very bad problem. If fans were going to get grabby, she could lose parts faster than she could grow them back. And there were a lot of fans. If they were all going to be like that, even she might not be able to kill them all.
She needed a plan. She also might need some inside help.
Not the other Hellcats; she was going to be deleting them at some point. Not the avatars, who were basically an even bigger waste of code. Not even—
Wait. Code. Plan. Help. Inside.
"Nerd," she said triumphantly.
A nanosecond later, she was back in Bunny's monitor. The girl was fast asleep, drooling into the numeric keypad—not a pretty sight even for a Hellcat.
"I'm doing you a favor, kid," Morbida told her, already reaching through the glass.
Of course, the kid would do her the favors first. Then they'd see.
Morbida closed her hand around the programmer's wrist and pulled her through the screen.
All they'd find of Bunny in the morning was the ratty cardigan, which Morbida had thrown back out. She had standards, after all.

To be continued
(c) 2002, K. Simpson

Note: This chapter is the last update until Part 2 is finished.
All those chapters will be posted together.

Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
PART 2
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: The TV series "Touched by an Angel" is a family program, positively nothing like the story title here. // The Darkling Plains are borrowed from the Matthew Arnold poem "Dover Beach" (but in the poem, it's "darkling plain," singular). // Note to male readers: Bunny is expressing her own opinion—not mine.	

PART 2

CHAPTER 5

All the Way in the Game

She'd finally lost it. There was no other explanation. The last thing she remembered was resting her eyes in the programming lab (well, that and something about her cats trying to assassinate her), and now she was here.
Where was here?
Bunny did another 360, hoping that the scenery had changed. Nope. She was still in some desert, but no desert she'd ever seen before. The whole world was red: cliffs, canyons, rocks, sagebrush, even sky. Except for the color, it could have been a Road Runner cartoon. Or a pickup-truck commercial.
Or some programmer's idea of Hell.
It was one of the more unwelcome sudden thoughts she'd ever had.
"Dreaming," she insisted. "Just dreaming. I'm OK."
She hadn't fooled herself a bit, but it felt better to say it. Resolutely, she closed her eyes, willing herself to go back to sleep and dream something else.
Then a hand touched her shoulder, and she shrieked in surprise. When her eyes got all the way open, she shrieked again—much louder.
The tall blonde villain in the black catsuit smiled as though it were music.
"Welcome to Hell," Morbida said.

Red Rocks, Level 1

It took a long time to make the girl understand. Morbida had been very patient, for her, explaining over and over. She wasn't sure that everything had gotten through, but at least the girl had stopped screaming. Good thing she hadn't brought her in through Level 5; the very sight of the Toads of Misfortune might've killed her, especially if they were breathing fire today.
"Do you understand?" she asked. "Have you got it now?"
The girl nodded, but with very little conviction.
"Tell me, then. Where are you?"
"Inside Hellcats."
"Good. Very good. Who am I?"
"Morbida."
"No, no, no. Like I taught you."
"Sorry." Bunny cleared her throat. "Morbida, the Goddess of Apocalypse, the Mistress of Vengeance, the Exalted She-Beast from Hell, the Glorious—"
There were several titles, so it took a while. Morbida didn't mind in the slightest. While the girl recited, she basked in the poetry of it all.
"Lovely," she said. "I'll teach you the others later. Questions so far?"
Bunny tried to ask a great many at the same time, but Morbida cut her off.
"I didn't think so. Good. Now let's try this one again: What are you going to do for me?"
Painfully, the girl thought. "Whatever you want?"
"Excellent. What else?"
"Whenever you want?"
"And...?"
"Nothing sexual," Bunny blurted out. "I know we didn't cover that, but I really don't want to do that. I'll do anything except that. OK?"
Morbida barely suppressed a fit of laughter. Like she, the Exalted She-Beast from Hell, would get that hard up. But she made note of the girl's fear of interfacing; you never knew what you could use as a weapon later.
"OK?" Bunny persisted, her voice rising a couple of octaves.
"It probably won't come up," Morbida said.
The girl didn't even smile. Too bad Vexatia wasn't around; she wasn't much fun as a rule, but she would've gotten the joke.

Dementa's Room

Patience exhausted, Vexatia made Dementa stop three lines into "Bad, Bad Blonde."
"But it's just getting to the good part," Dementa protested.
"Let me guess—you get naked."
"Well, yeah, but I get to kill things too."
"Like what things? Me?"
The blonde Hellcat smirked, which answered the question.
"Quit being a bitch for just one minute and talk to me," Vexatia said.
"I am talking to you."
"Don't you want to get out and see what Morbida's up to?"
"What for? All she does is look for stuff about herself and read the stories. Mostly the alt ones. They're kinkier. Did you ever read 'Touched All Over by an Angel'?"
Vexatia's head was starting to feel like someone was working inside it with a jackhammer. How could Dementa be better read than she was?
"You're in it, toots," Dementa said. "You've got six whole pages of a subroutine with Chastity Swan and a poodle. Then Morbida comes along and kills them, and then you get it on with Morbida. A lot. Then the doofus who wrote the story puts himself in. Then I stop by, and we all—"
But Vexatia wasn't listening anymore. Where were the stories about her? Did she ever get to be the star? Did there necessarily have to be poodles?
"Let me see where you found this stuff. And then we'll interface if you still want to."
"Oh, goody," Dementa said.

The Darkling Plains: Level 2

By the time Morbida finished showing her around Level 1, Bunny had stopped making that funny whistling noise when she breathed, so it seemed to be all right to move on to Level 2. Besides, Morbida liked the Darkling Plains. The smart avatars didn't have many weapons at that stage, the dumb ones were already dead in Red Rocks one level down, and she'd once had a memorable interface there with Dirk Hammer and Chastity Swan.
More important, the lighting was really dramatic. Did great things for her cheekbones.
"Keep up," she told the girl as they stepped in. "It's flat here, so we'll make good time."
Bunny could see that it was flat. Plains tended to be flat; there was a reason for the expression "flat as Kansas." But she wasn't in Kansas.
She wasn't even entirely convinced that she was awake. None of this was possible, so it couldn't be real. She was almost sure it couldn't. But maybe Morbida would know for sure, so she asked.
"Define 'real,'" Morbida said.
"Physical. Tangible. Really, truly, actually happening."
The Hellcat pinched the girl, who yelped. "Happening enough for you?"
"That's going to bruise," Bunny complained, rubbing the place.
"Quit whining. You've still got the whole arm. If I'd used the Pincers of Cruelty on you, you'd be left-handed right now."
Bunny wasn't as grateful as she could have been. Sullenly, she trudged after the mean woman.
"As long as you're here," Morbida said, "you might as well clear up a few things for me. The names in this game, to begin with. How do you explain them?"
"I don't. I didn't have anything to do with anything. I mean, I've only been working for ADS for a year. They wouldn't even let me get near Hellcats until the other day, and that was only because it was an emer—"
"Yes, yes, yes, you're as innocent as a lamb. I happen to like souvlaki, though. So you might want to reconsider your answer."
"I can do that," Bunny said in a very small voice.
"I never doubted it. Now explain about the names. Start with the Pincers of Cruelty. Why?"
"Why not?"
"I may be animated. I may even be naturally blonde. But don't mistake me for dumb. Explain the names."
Given no choice in the matter, then, Bunny decided to tell the truth. "Twelve-year-old boys."
"Excuse me?"
"Most programmers are men, and most men are 12-year-old boys. They like boobs and booger jokes and things that blow up. They think comic books are literature."
Ah. The girl was bitter. Morbida liked that. "Go on."
"That's where this stuff comes from," Bunny said. "Comic books."
"I've seen comic books." Shrewdly, Morbida decided not to mention the circumstances; that little field trip to Pete's Comics was none of the girl's business. Not yet.
"Then you get the idea."
Morbida flashed back on the pasty clerk in the Spider-Man briefs. "I'm beginning to."
"You're right, though. They are dumb names," Bunny conceded. "I mean, God. 'Morbida'?"
"You've misspoken," the Hellcat snapped. "'Morbida' is a beautiful name."
Her blood froze. "Of course it is. Absolutely. I meant 'Vexatia.'"
"Of course you did. 'Vexatia' is a very, very bad name. So is 'Dementa.' Don't you agree?"
"I do. I really, really do. I can find out who named them, if you want me to. If you want to just send me on back, I'll get right to work on it. Can I start now?"
Unwillingly, Morbida almost smiled. "No. But not a bad try. Now explain to me about these cones."

Dementa's Room

Life was so unfair. Vexatia had thrown a loud tantrum and several pieces of bric-a-brac, including Dementa's Hello Kitty ceramics, but it hadn't made her feel better. Neither had it pleased the other Hellcat, who'd made her regenerate everything.
"They're just Web sites," Dementa said.
"Doesn't matter. I ought to have as many as you do."
"We've been over this, girlfriend. I'm blonde. You're not."
"I can't help that!" Vexatia shouted, kicking the end of the chaise longue.
"Neither can I. So stop whining."
"I don't whine. I kill."
"Then kill, already. Go out and play a few rounds."
"I thought you wanted to interface."
"Nobody wants to do it with a whiner," Dementa said. "Go kill things, and don't come back until you're in a good mood."
Die, Vexatia thought. On the way out, she swiped one of the kitty ceramics. Maybe she could smash it over a Dementa clone's big fat head.

The Darkling Plains

Morbida made Bunny stop talking about programmers after a while. Bitter was good, but past a certain point, it was merely tiresome. Anyway, she'd found out all she wanted to know. The girl was a programmer; the girl didn't like programmers; ergo, the girl had self-esteem issues. And likely a broken romance or two. All good. Morbida knew what buttons to push now.
She started with Fear.
"This is a dangerous place," Morbida told her. "It's my place. Almost everything around here would sooner kill you than look at you. Depending on my whim, I might let that happen. My advice to you is not to cross me. Understood?"
"Yes, but—"
"Don't 'Yes, but' me. If you want to see the outside again, you'll do exactly what I ask, exactly when I ask it, and you won't 'Yes, but' me again unless you want your tongue ripped out. Is that clear?"
Not daring to speak under the circumstances, Bunny nodded.
"That's better. Now let's discuss the rules. You don't cross me. You don't question me. You just run the program, and you let me play the game."
Bunny didn't think "the game" meant Hellcats—not the way Morbida had said it. But, still mindful of that ripping-out-the-tongue thing, she didn't ask.
"One more thing," Morbida said. "You need an upgrade. If I have to look at you for a couple of days, you might as well be presentable."
"I'm not questioning you," Bunny said hesitantly, "but what do you mean by 'presentable'?"
"You'll see. Come with me."

Hell's Half-Acre: Level 4

Nothing adjusts an attitude like a brisk workout with sharp things. Vexatia threw herself against five avatars like a pit bull with PMS, leaving pieces of her opponents all over Hell's Half-Acre. She pried the Machete of Might out of Brick Christian's dead hand and hooked it onto her belt as a trophy. Then she went for a restorative walk, whistling all the way.
She liked the Half-Acre; it had always been lucky for her. Like just now, for example. She'd killed; she'd maimed; she'd had fun; she'd almost forgotten about Dementa.
It was time for a little reward. So she stopped by Hellbucks for a brimstone latte.
She was lounging in one of the wing chairs next to the brazier when a stranger wandered in. Vexatia couldn't remember ever having seen him before. He wasn't one of the minimally coded supporting characters; judging by the boots, the perfect hair, and the weapons, he was an avatar.
On a hunch, she scanned down him. Ah, yes—a roll-your-own job. Only teenage gamers built them this way. Vexatia had heard of the theory of compensation.
Still, he was sort of nice-looking, and she was getting back in the mood. Which gave her a great idea: She could take him back to Dementa with her. The two of them could split him and then dispose of the body.

Dementa's Room

Dementa was polishing the Orb of Torment, just to have it nice and shiny in case she could talk Christiana Virtue into tormenting her with it later. If not...well, there were always the boys.
Better yet, there was everyone. This prospect put her in a good mood. So she wasn't happy to see Morbida in the doorway; the bitch had a way of ruining good moods.
"Get lost. I'm busy."
"And I'm the leader," Morbida said. "We're coming in."
Dementa frowned. Her and who? Was that shrew Vexatia back already? "You can't come in. I said I'm—eeeeek!"
Startled, Bunny watch the orb fly several feet straight up in the air. Dementa recovered it, but only barely.
"What is that?" the Hellcat demanded, pointing at Bunny.
"It's a programmer," Morbida said.
"I don't like it. It's drab. Get it out of here. Where did it come from?"
"Outside."
"Then take it back outside. Make it wipe its feet."
"Outside," Morbida said, "as in out there. It's from the other side."
Dementa blinked. "You don't mean...?"
"I do mean. Through the glass."
What a concept. Dementa tried to process it, failed, and promptly lost interest. "What does it want?"
"Ask it yourself," Morbida said.
Uncomfortably, Bunny cleared her throat again. "I don't want to be rude, but I'm—"
"Hey, it talks!" Dementa cried.
"—not an 'it.' I'm a person. And I don't want anything. I don't even know why she brought me—"
"Don't interrupt me when I'm interrupting you. Besides, I'm not even talking to you." She turned back to Morbida. "It's a person?"
"More or less," Morbida said. "It's going to be working for me for a couple of days. I thought you might want to do me a favor and fix it up a little."
Dementa considered. "That'd take more than a couple of days. We're talking major work. But why would I do you any favors?"
"It's a programmer," Morbida repeated. "It can do you favors. Want your cones sharpened? Want to lose five pounds? Want to be a real blonde?"
Dementa considered again. "All that, and throw in a little dusting. I could use some domestic help around here. Does it do windows?"
"I really don't want to be difficult," Bunny said, "but I'm not an 'it.'"
Both Hellcats ignored her. "Done," Morbida said, and they shook on it.
Depressed, Bunny sank down on an overstuffed pink tuffet. She was busy giving herself up for lost when a shadow fell over her from the doorway. Two shadows, actually.
"What's going on in here?" Vexatia asked.
The other Hellcats turned, and Dementa eeked again at the sight of yet another stranger. But it was a short eek. He was kind of cute.

A Few Minutes Later

There'd been sharp words, and a few fireballs had been thrown, but in the end, Morbida won. She always did. She'd left with the avatar, leaving Bunny with Vexatia and Dementa, and Bunny didn't think they'd be an improvement.
From the tuffet, she watched the two Hellcats whisper furiously at each other. She could catch only a few words—"programmer," "presentable," "snowball in Hell"—but the tone didn't reassure her.
Finally, they broke up their conference and walked over to her. She did her best not to whimper in fear at the look in Vexatia's eye.
"Who do you like better?" Vexatia asked. "Morbida or us?"
Bunny stammered a bit before she got the words out. "I don't know. I just met you. But you all seem very nice. Really, you d—"
The Hellcat scowled. "'Nice'? Watch your language. I mean lookswise. Who do you want to look like?"
"And think really hard before you answer," Dementa added.
She was thinking as hard as she possibly could when a blood-curdling yell outside made her jump. Before she'd even landed, a head rolled into the room.
"Oh, my God!" Bunny screamed.
"Relax," Vexatia said. "It's just that new guy I picked up." Disinterested, she nudged it over with the toe of her boot. "I guess Morbida's done with him already."
"Done with him?"
"Pretty much. She does that with most of the boys. She's not interested in their minds."
Bunny got a very clear picture of a praying mantis in tight black leather with pointy cones. It upset her so much that she fainted.
"Weenie," Dementa sniffed. "And she only just got here."

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: RAM stands for random-access memory and is my idea of a little (very little) joke in this context.	

CHAPTER 6

In the Game: Dementa's Room

When she came to, the head was still there, so Bunny considered fainting again. First, though, she steeled herself for a second look. The head was propped up on Dementa's dressing table now, wearing a wig and makeup. In spite of herself, she found this interesting.
Vexatia and Dementa, standing over her, appeared to be finding her interesting, too. She blinked a few times. "Hello?"
Neither of them answered. "I still don't know," Dementa mused. "The blue shadow works better on the dead guy. What if we try a nice fuchsia?"
Vexatia squinted at Bunny. "Might clash with the outfit. Morbida might not like that."
"Perfect. Gimme."
While Vexatia fished in the sea of pots on the dressing table, Bunny tried again. "Hello? Did I miss something?"
"It's awake," Vexatia said. "Do we care?"
"No." Impatient, Dementa grabbed the fuchsia shadow herself. Then she bent over Bunny. "Sit still. This might hurt a little."
"Does it have to?" Bunny quavered.
"Suffering is nine-tenths of beauty, honey. Hold still."
She did her best. It did hurt a little—but not as much as whatever she was wearing. In the sea-change of waking up, she hadn't really noticed that most of her circulation was cut off. While Vexatia held her head in place and Dementa swabbed on the new color, she felt down herself furtively. Whatever this getup was, it felt like leather, tight as a drumhead. And her feet were hurting, too.
"Stop squirming," Dementa told her.
"I'm not squirming. I'm—"
"Nails," Vexatia said over her. "What color? Hussy Scarlet? White Trash Red?"
Dementa shook her head. "Use press-ons. It doesn't have any nails of its own."
"I really wish you'd stop calling me 'it,'" Bunny complained. "I'm a woman."
"Not until we're done with you," Dementa said.
Vexatia let go of Bunny abruptly. "I'm not interfacing with it."
"Wait till I finish. You might change your mind. I'm an artiste. Now hold its head, damn you."
Grumbling, Vexatia complied. Bunny stifled a yelp; the Hellcat was holding on a lot tighter this time.
To distract herself from the pain, she studied the dead head on the dressing table. The sinking feeling started when she realized that they were using it as a model. The orange hair, the awful batlike swooshes of eye shadow, the lurid lipstick...
Bunny shuddered.
But even with all that, something was missing. She checked again. "Excuse me?"
"'Excuse me, Your Evilnesses,'" Vexatia corrected, clamping down harder.
Ow. She rephrased the question. "Excuse me, Your Evilnesses, but I was wondering something. Why you didn't put mascara on that head?"
"No eyelashes," Dementa said.
Surprised, Bunny glanced back and forth between the Hellcats. "Why not? You've both got 'em."
"Of course we do. We're the master copies. That's how you tell the difference: the lashes."
"Master copies?"
"We can't be everywhere at the same time. We've all got clones," Vexatia said.
"Clones?"
Dementa grimaced. "It may be part parrot. I liked it better when it was asleep."
"I'm not questioning you," Bunny said, remembering Morbida's warning. "I'm just trying to understand. You've got clones?"
"I'm bored. You handle it," Dementa told Vexatia.
She decided to interpret that as Dementa's admission of inferior brainpower—long overdue, but still an admission. So, rather happily, she set out to explain it all to Bunny. The clones did most of the work, she said; the master copies were too important to waste their time gaming with just anybody. They were erase-protected, so nothing permanent could happen to them, but they still didn't risk their persons any more than they had to. When they did play, it was for their own amusement. Which was the beauty part of being a master, after all.
"And that programmer gave us our own level so we can do whatever we want," Vexatia added. "That's where you are right now. Level X."
Dementa paused in her work. "What programmer?"
"The one who looked like a bear who needed a haircut. Remember? He smelled funny, too. Even through the glass. When he gave us that one upgrade—"
Alarmed, Bunny cut in. "He looked like a bear? And he smelled funny? Are you sure?"
"Don't question us," Dementa scolded.
"I'm not. I swear. It's just that I might know this guy. Did he smell like gym socks?"
The Hellcats consulted each other in silence.
"What do gym socks smell like?" Vexatia finally asked.
Bunny grappled with how to explain the concept of two-week-old gym socks festering under the bed but gave it up; they'd probably never had brothers or been in a men's dorm. "Do you know what a landfill is?"
"He just smelled funny," Dementa said dismissively. Then she stepped back to check her handiwork. "What do you think, Vex? Does it look about done now?"
The other Hellcat studied the matter from several angles. "Better than it did when it got here."
"Told you. I'm an artiste. Want me to do your hair now?"
"About this 'it' thing," Bunny said. "I wonder if you couldn't possibly—"
"Oh, shut up and take a look," Dementa told her.
The programmer tried to stand but found that she couldn't. God, all that leather was on tight. Grudgingly, Vexatia helped her up and aimed her at the nearest mirror.

The Darkling Plains

The homemade avatar hadn't been entirely satisfying. Morbida thought she might do better than Vexatia on the same hunting ground, so she dropped in at Hellbucks. There were several on every level, but her favorite was in the Plains—overpriced, overcrowded, and there was that fantastic lighting, too.
No sooner had she slaughtered most of the other customers and settled on the good couch with a mochaccino than Christiana Virtue walked in.
Ah. That would do. Dementa had been yapping about her ever since that Dutch person played in her a three-way. It would be amusing to see whether the avatar knew all the uses for the Spear of Chastity; Morbida had tried it once on Lance A. Lot, but the moron never got off his horse.
Well, she would see about this one. There was a lot of back-end-process gossip about her anyway; everyone said Virtue was her own reward.
Morbida was in the mood to be rewarded. Let the others fix up the programmer while she processed an avatar. Shouldn't take more than ten, twenty seconds, especially if she sharpened the spear first.

Dementa's Room

Bunny was still staring at herself in the mirror when Morbida came back. Being in a good mood from her conquest, she didn't smite the girl for not paying immediate attention. She simply made a note to smite her later.
"So," she said to Dementa, who'd retired to the chaise longue. "It's finished?"
"Finished as it's getting. You didn't give me much to work with."
"Show me."
Dementa didn't feel like moving, but Morbida drew her dagger, which was motivating enough. She jumped up and turned the programmer around for inspection.
"Hey!" Vexatia cried. "Do you mind? I'm still trying to get these nails to stick on it."
Morbida wasn't impressed. "Improvise."
Sulking, Vexatia scooted around to get back into position and went back to work on the nails. The girl didn't resist; in fact, she hadn't moved a pixel since she'd first looked in the mirror.
"Well?" Dementa asked.
Morbida scanned the programmer critically. An interesting look. Not necessarily a good look. The orange hair didn't go with the fuchsia eye shadow, which didn't go with the bright-red catsuit, which didn't go with the maroon lipstick, but overall, it was a vast improvement. "More cleavage," she finally said.
Dementa pouted. "I told you, I didn't get much to work with."
"Cones adjust."
"Well, it's a programmer, isn't it? Let it adjust itself."
A heated discussion followed—something about basic geometry and the laws of physics and whether size did or didn't matter—but Bunny wasn't listening. What she'd seen in the mirror was horrifying. And fascinating. And...
"You. There. Nerd," Morbida snapped. "Pay attention. Can you adjust yourself?"
"What do you mean?" Bunny asked.
"Your cones aren't right," Vexatia said. "They're a little...well...they're supposed to be proud."
When she realized that Morbida and Dementa were staring at her, and not approvingly, either, she added, "It's in the fanfic. 'Cool Chicks in Hell.' You know: 'The Hellcats stood over their dead enemies, their cones saluting proudly in the sunset.' That's the part right before the sex scene."
Her colleagues' disapproval only deepened. Annoyed, Vexatia felt for the machete on her belt. "Knock it off. I don't make this stuff up."
"You couldn't if you tried, buttercup," Dementa said.
That did it. With a terrible battle cry, Vexatia unhooked the machete and swung it around her head a few times. She was within killing range of the smarty-pants blonde when Morbida clotheslined her—high, to miss the cones. Vexatia went down, and the machete went flying, landing barely a foot from Bunny.
Who would have screamed if she'd noticed, but she hadn't, still being very occupied with checking herself out in the mirror.
Morbida didn't like other people's vanity but decided to let it pass. The girl would only have screamed again if she'd been paying attention, and the screaming was getting old.
"Just fix the cleavage," Morbida demanded. "I don't need a have-not hanging around. I don't do charity."
"Neither do I," Dementa said. "So why should I?"
Morbida picked up the fallen machete, tested the edge, and advanced on the other Hellcat.
Getting the message, Dementa started backing away. "All right, OK, I'll try. Sheesh! It's not like I'm—hey!" She flailed her arms wildly, trying to hang on to her balance, but she'd tripped just far enough over Vexatia to make balance impossible.
She went down with a crash that satisfied Morbida. More, in fact, than Christiana Virtue had done.
"I'm going out for a play," she told them. "I feel like killing something. Have the programmer fixed by the time I get back, or I'll delete you two early. Understood?"
On the carpet, Vexatia paused in the process of shoving Dementa off her. "Delete us? Delete us early? What are you talking about?"
"Don't argue. Just do it," Morbida growled.
She flipped the machete at them and stalked out, never bothering to look where the weapon went—which was just as well, because it chopped the head on the dressing table in half.
Bunny never bothered either. She was running her fingertips up and down herself in rapture, still gazing at the image in the mirror.

It had taken another hour, a couple of rolls of double-stick tape, and a lot of bad language, but the cleavage problem was solved. Relieved, Vexatia tugged the right cone back into place. Then she wiped her hands on Dementa's pink curtains. If Morbida didn't like it, let the bitch deal; she wasn't touching the programmer again.
"Want to take it for a walk?" Dementa asked.
"What for?"
"It could use some exercise. It's been looking at itself in the mirror forever."
That it had. Vexatia frowned. She liked narcissism fine, but only when it was hers. Also, if you asked her, the nerd didn't look that good. Well, yes, by comparison with how she looked before, but still.
"Brimstone Sea," Vexatia suggested. "And bring a leash."

By the Brimstone Sea: Level 3

By the time they reached the seashore, Bunny's feet were killing her. Sure, the boots looked good, but they weren't made for distance. Moreover, she was out of practice with heels. There'd been that last bridesmaid gig, with the green taffeta and the dyed-to-match sandals, but that had been a year ago, and the heels had only been a couple of inches, and she'd been too mortified by the flower ring on her head to worry much about falling down. She didn't have the sandals anymore anyway; two weeks after the wedding, the heel came off one of them when she used it to kill a spider.
Now that she thought about it, the marriage hadn't lasted much longer. Neither had the best man, and he never did call her after that night.
Bastard. Somehow, the memory only made her feet hurt more.
"Can we sit down for a second?" she yelled.
Vexatia and Dementa, who were way ahead of her on purpose, slowed down a bit but didn't stop. "We're almost there," Vexatia called back. "Keep up."
Dementa watched the programmer's lips move. "I think she just told us to 'face ourselves. Or the other word, maybe. Want to kill her?"
"Naaah. Waste of programming."
"Well, I feel like killing something. Do you suppose anybody's playing around here right now?"
"Probably." A pleasant thought struck Vexatia. "We might see Blade Damage. He likes to hang out at the cabanas. Want to do him?"
"He won't want to do us," Dementa said. "He's been hanging out with Rock Hunter a lot."
"So?"
"Rock Hunter. Hello, bitch. He's gay."
That brought Vexatia to a full stop. "We don't know that."
"With that name?"
Well...
"And did you ever notice he only plays with men around?" Dementa persisted. "And what about the hair? What about the white boots?"
All right, so he was. So those stolen moments they shared were lies. So it meant nothing when he touched—
"What about Morbida?" Dementa asked.
The non sequitur almost stripped a line of Vexatia's code. "Huh?"
"She said something about deleting people. What do you think she meant by that?"
Thank Lucifer. For a nanosecond there, she'd thought Dementa was going to tell her Morbida was gay, too.
Not that it mattered. That sort of thing didn't make a difference to Hellcats; they were programmed that way; they'd all interfaced a billion times. Maybe a trillion by now. But somehow, it might change things if she thought Morbida meant any of it.
"Are you listening to me? I said, what do you think she—"
"I don't know," Vexatia snapped. "I'll think about it later. Right now, I want to kill something."
"Really? Well, that's all good. You're cute when you're mad."
"Oh, go 'face yourself."
And she went on ahead, leaving her comrade to wonder whether she'd meant that nice.

Bunny caught up with them at the cabanas. Actually, she caught up with Dementa, who was lounging in the best chair; Vexatia was busy with a pitchfork, chasing some guy in white boots.
"Don't mind her," Dementa said. "It's just the heartbreak of heartbreak. Sit down."
With a groan of relief, the programmer sank down on the sand.
The Hellcat frowned. "Not there. In a chair. You don't want sand under the outfit."
"I'm fine," Bunny lied. "Just resting."
"Good. You rest up. And while you do that, I'll read you a nice story. Have you ever heard 'Dementa's Song'?"
Bunny hadn't and didn't care to, but before the Hellcat even finished clearing her throat, a commotion a few cabanas over distracted both of them. Two avatars seemed to be having an argument; apparently, one of them had just told the other to step outside.
Dementa whistled appreciatively and lowered her sunglasses. "Damn me all over again. If that isn't Max Justice."
"Who?"
"Max Justice. Haven't seen him since I killed him a few weeks ago."
"Who's the other one?"
But Dementa wasn't listening. "Yoo hoo! Max! Sweetie! Get your cute little codpiece over here!"
The avatar smiled, teeth blinding in the artificial sun. "Not so little, babe. Remember?"
"Refresh my RAM," she suggested. "And bring your friend."
Bunny wasn't sure whether to run, dig a hole for herself, or faint again. But she couldn't run (not in those boots); she couldn't dig (not with those press-on nails); and if she fainted, she might miss something. So she just sat there and watched the avatars walk toward them. The closer they got, the cuter they got. Especially that one guy. What was his name again?
Then he was right there, smiling down at her. "Haven't seen you around here before. I'm Max Justice. And you are...?"
Later, Bunny would swear she never meant it—it just popped out. But she heard herself saying it anyway:
"Hellacia."
Dementa was about to punish her for that when she got an idea. A mean idea. One that would really piss Vexatia off. It might not do much for Morbida, either.
Goody.
"I've forgotten my manners," she said, feigning distress. "Do let me introduce you. Hellacia, Maximum Justice. Maximum Justice, Hellacia." She paused for effect. "Vexatia's baby sister."
Now it was Bunny's turn to decide what to do. But the tall avatar was still smiling at her, the sunlight bright on his eyelashes—master copy!—and her insides felt all fluttery. So she did nothing.
"Charmed," Max said.
Bunny swallowed hard. "Me too."
In her lounge chair, Dementa dimpled prettily. "Me three. This could be fun."

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross created the stages-of-dying (or stages-of-grief) model. In order of progression, the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. // No offense to Enya, either	

CHAPTER 7

Arrested Development Software

Jeff Feynman had found clumps of hair on his pillow that morning, not his girlfriend's color and too long to be the dog's. He'd tried the Kübler-Ross stages but kept backsliding to denial, where he finally gave up. It was stress, genetics, weak follicles, and/or his father's fault.
Also that girl programmer's. Ever since she'd disappeared, his stress level had gone through the roof. The police had been crawling all over the place, poking into everything, and no business owner could be really happy to have the law hanging around all day. Especially a business owner with rehab in his past and more than daffodils growing in his garden.
That reminded him. Nervously, he felt in his pocket for his keys. If you squeezed one of them in a certain place, it split down the middle like a roach clip, which it was. You couldn't tell by looking at it, but he knew. And you never knew who could tell things just by looking at you.
So when no one was paying attention, he shoved the clip into the floppy slot on Bunny's external drive. The cops would never think to check there, and he could come back for it later.
The small noise bothered one of the detectives who was dusting for prints. "What was that?"
"Nothing," Feynman assured him. "Want another doughnut? I don't mean that like a cliché, of course, but—"
"Jelly would be good," the detective said.

Fictitious Hotel
Orlando, Florida

Two days to go before GameWars, and the hotel staff still didn't have the vendor room ready. Down to her very last seconds of patience, Janice picked up the house phone and dialed the concierge.
"Me again. Would you please tell the manager that the programming director of Ketchum & Skinner is still waiting to see him? I'm still in the Orchid Ballroom. That's the Orchid Ballroom. It's the big one with the sign that says ORCHID BALLROOM. He can't miss it. But if directions would help him, I'll...Hello? Hello?"
Right. She said terrible things to the dial tone and slammed the receiver back on the hook.
A young man in a yellow K&S T-shirt held his cell phone away for a moment. "You're always gonna get hung up on when you get like that. How come you don't know that?"
"How come you don't go kiss a pig's butt?"
He only laughed and went back to his call. Janice glowered at him until the hate faded a little. Then she stomped off to bother the staff some more. Time wasn't getting any shorter. They'd be getting vendors in tonight; the talent would be here tomorrow; the next day, the fans. God help them, the fans. Their sheer numbers. Their tiny attention spans. Their endless, conflicting, impossible-to-satisfy demands. Working conventions was like trying to drive six hundred head of cattle with entitlement issues.

BOSSY: I'm first in line.
BESSIE: No, I am.
BOSSY: No, me.
BESSIE: Me.
BOSSY: Me!
CLARABELLE: Damn you both to Hell. Me!
Biting ensues.	

But the cattle had credit cards. Couldn't forget that.

Pete's Comics & Fantasy

The little group around the cash register was hanging on the clerk's every breath.
"It was her all right," he said. "Morbida herself."
"She really made you get naked?" one of the boys asked.
"Butt-naked, man."
Long silence.
"Cool," another boy said. "And she got naked?"
The clerk tried to look accustomed to this sort of thing. "Ripped her own clothes off. She wanted it bad."
Everyone did his best to imagine.
"How was it?" the first boy asked.
Drawing on rumor, guesswork, television, and the dirty paperback novels his sister hid under her bed, the clerk told them. His facts weren't precisely accurate, his hydraulics were off, his grasp of human anatomy imperfect at best, but nobody noticed.
Neither did they notice the shoplifter in the Batman-collectibles section. Oh, well.

Around the Hellscape

They were packing in Cleveland, Tampa, Phoenix, and a hundred other places, mostly packing jeans, T-shirts, and the good sneakers. A few people were taking dress clothes, which is to say Dockers, but they were first-timers. After they'd experienced an autograph line for themselves, they'd know to dress for combat at cons.
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Jamie and Sally already had the suitcases waiting by the front door. Now they were having a small argument about whether to take the new digital camera or the costly Nikon that they were still paying for. But when she pointed out that they'd have more room in the backpack for merchandise if they didn't have to take film, he gladly let her win. He'd had his eye on the new Vexatia shot glasses for weeks.
John Michael's Hellcatz Zone
John Michael was putting the final touches on his last Web-site update before the convention: a new page of screen captures from Level 7. Very few gamers ever bothered to go that far, so he'd scoop the whole Hellscape with this. Also, just about everybody was naked on Level 7. Kewl.
Halfway through the upload, someone knocked. Lucky he'd remembered to lock the door and put that chair under the knob.
"Johnny? Honey? It's past 11. Why aren't you in bed?"
Crud. He yelled over his shoulder at the door. "Homework, Mom."
On the other side, his mother sighed. It was bad enough that he had to be in summer school again this year; at this rate, he might never graduate. As for getting into a good college...
Well, there was always vocational school. Failing that, the Army. "Fifteen more minutes, and then I want to see those lights out, young man."
"OK, Mom."
John Michael waited until her footsteps were far enough away; then he went back to work. He made extra-sure to press the keys softly this time.
Over the Hardware Store
In the tiny apartment in downtown nowhere, LoveBytes was busy with her latest work. Every few seconds, an instant message from one of the LoveBits popped up on the monitor, but she paid no attention. The messages were all "When do we get the new story?" and "Are you done yet?"—the price of being the best-loved romance writer on the Hellscape. It was a price she liked paying, but not in the heat of composition.
LoveBytes turned up the Enya CD and closed her eyes, the better to compose. She'd left Vexatia sobbing over one of Morbida's gloves, which she'd found under the bed after the last time they courted. Vexatia had been cherishing it ever since, and now Morbida was gone. Gone into thin, thin air, like a gentle mist over the moors...
Whoa. That rocked. She picked up the CD's empty jewel case and kissed the cover.
"Thanks again, babe," she said.

Fictitious Hotel

The manager found the ballroom, Janice found a few choice words, and the staff had the vendor room open in a half-hour. Next year, Ketchum & Skinner would get a much less generous discount on the block of rooms. The manager thought he might tack 5 percent more onto the catering, too. But that would be next year. All he could do now was cooperate, endure, and hope that the bad-tempered woman would come down with laryngitis or walk under a falling safe.
On the way back to his office, he detoured past the concierge station.
"That person from Ketchum & Skinner," he said. "If she calls again, put her through to Housekeeping."
"But it's Spanish-speaking staff today, isn't it?" the concierge asked.
The manager smiled.

Over the Hardware Store

Satisfied, LoveBytes tilted her chair back and read over "Such Sweet Sorrow" one last time. The Bits would love it, just like they did all the others. And she'd even worked moors into this one. She bet that big snot Hellkitty couldn't do that.
No time for a spell check; it was getting on toward midnight, and she still had another story to write. So she uploaded "Sorrow" to her mailing lists. Then she turned off Enya, shut off the big computer, and flopped down on the bed to assume her other identity.
While she waited for the old IBM laptop to boot up, she stuck a Green Day CD into her Discman, put the headphones on, and cranked up the volume. Vexatia6969 was back in town, and she had a new whip.

London, England

Anastasia hadn't touched the computer for more than a day. She still felt unwell, but a person really couldn't stay in bed with ice packs forever, and the port was gone now anyway. As long as she refused to remember where the sherry was, she'd probably be fine.
So, braced by tea and aspirin, she sat down to give Hellcats another go. Everything started off normally enough this time; Morbida was back, at least. She began to hope that it had all been a frightful dream.
But thirty seconds into play on Level 3, the screen flickered, and she saw something that shouldn't have been there—too short to be a Hellcat and not built exactly like one but dressed up like one anyway, only in red leather.
Before she could blink again, the image vanished. Unfortunately, it had distracted her long enough for Dementa to sneak up on her avatar. Anastasia lunged for the mouse an instant too late and could only watch parts of poor Prudence Upright fly across the screen.
"Bollocks," she said, and went off to fetch the sherry.

In the Lab: Arrested Development Software

The lab where Bunny had disappeared was open for business again; the police had dusted and photographed everything and finally gone away. In the morning, by Jeff Feynman's orders, there'd be a security guard on duty. Tonight, though, Ted was in the lab alone.
It was so damn unfair. Just because he was Lovell's supervisor didn't mean he was responsible for her. Just because she'd been the last person to work on Hellcats didn't mean he should have to finish the job.
But the very worst part was the babysitting part. Ted's boss had dropped the cage off with him yesterday. He was the one who'd lost Lovell, his boss said, so he was the one who had to look after her cats.
That was by Feynman's orders, too. Sadistic bastard.

Red Deer, Alberta

Mique and Melly were having one more play before she had to go home and make dinner and he had to go to work. Their avatars (Brick Christian and Chastity Swan) had battled Dementa to the top of a cliff in Red Rocks; the Hellcat was down to one fireball, and they hadn't even used their slingshots yet. Mique thought he could get Dementa right between the eyes. Melly said he was welcome to try, even though Dementa would need to have eyes about twenty meters apart for him to make that shot.
She was lucky she was his cousin; otherwise, Mique might've taken it personally.
While Melly kept Dementa busy with Chastity, Mique loaded Brick's slingshot, stepped him back to get better position...
...and sent him right over the cliff. Whoops.
He and Melly watched Brick hit the canyon floor without comment. Neither of them saw Dementa behead Chastity on top of the cliff. Neither did they notice the tiny flicker in the monitor or the small figure in red leather that appeared and disappeared with it.

In the Lab

Ted had been poking away at the code off and on for an hour or so when Feynman himself walked in. Jesus! He tried to hide the streaming feed from the baseball game behind the code editor but forgot about the sound.
Stupid geek, Feynman thought.
"I'm working on it, Mr. F," Ted said. "Oughta have it wrapped up in a couple hours. Want to see?"
Feynman shook his head. "I'm on my way out. Just wanted to make sure you were all right in here." Casually, he walked around the workstation and leaned against the desktop—the part in front of the floppy drive. "Find any more bugs?"
"Just the usual."
"The usual" could mean anything from catastrophic coding errors to a single typo, but it didn't matter; no software worked right anyway. Which was the beauty of it, of course. If you didn't have to have upgrades, how could you ever sell the same product over and over and over? Sure, that "planned obsolescence" thing had worked for carmakers for years, but technical error was way more profitable.
But no programmer wanted to hear that. So Feynman spouted a few platitudes about doing your best. Meanwhile, he was reaching back for the floppy drive. Best to eject the roach clip on the QT if he could.
He waited for the feed from the baseball game to get loud; then he pressed the eject button. The drive whirred, but nothing came out.
OK, Plan B.
"While I'm here," he told Ted, "let me check the external drive. I think I left a disc in it this afternoon."
Ted didn't know why the head of the company would be using a junior programmer's computer, but he didn't care, either. To be minimally helpful, he pushed the drive over to Feynman. Then he went back to debugging.
Feynman tried the eject button openly this time, with the same result. Odd. Sounded like nothing was even in there. He grabbed a paper clip, unstraightened it, and pushed one end into the little hole on the drive. Still nothing. He was poking the paper clip into the guts of the thing when Ted swore under his breath.
"That would be 'Oh, shit, sir,'" Feynman said, not especially amused. "What's the problem?"
"Nothing, sir."
Ted hoped it was nothing, anyway. Either he was crazy, or a house key had just dropped into the game.

(c) 2002, K. Simpson

Stories page	The Devil's Workshop	

***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
NOTES: In American football, a desperation pass is called a Hail Mary.	

CHAPTER 8

In the Game: By the Brimstone Sea

After the boys left, Bunny sat staring at their footprints in the sand a long, long time. Which didn't escape Dementa. "Would this be interspecies dating?"
"I was only being friendly," Bunny said, too quickly.
"Sure you were, honey. And you know what you hope that leads to."
She blushed but didn't deny it. "I thought you were supposed to be dumb."
"Don't believe everything you think you suppose."
So Yogi Berra was in her code too, along with Carole Lombard and Jack the Ripper. Bunny thought she could fix that. "Why not?"
"I get upgrades, you know. The smelly guy gave me more AI than Vexatia got. But don't tell her. It's so much fun torturing her."
"The smelly guy?" Bunny flashed back on that conversation earlier. "You mean Jerry? He gave you artificial intelligence?"
Dementa bristled. "Watch who you're calling 'artificial.' Everything in this outfit is mine."
"He gave you artificial intelligence? Are you sure?"
"I just said so, didn't I?" The Hellcat peered at her suspiciously. "You could use an upgrade yourself. You're kind of slow on the uptake."
"A lot's happened today," Bunny admitted.
"And a lot more could. Want to interface...Hellacia?"

Hell's Kitchenette, Level 5

The last Toad of Misfortune lay twitching on the street, feebly breathing sparks, and Blade Damage figured the coast was clear. Clever of Vexatia to deploy the toads right after the Spiders of Anxiety; she knew that spiders freaked him.
But right now, he was on his game. Better yet, he was ahead. Hell's Kitchenette was a smoldering ruin. The streets were full of dead roaches, dead spiders, and dead or dying toads. And Vexatia was running out of weapons. If he could get past her to Level 6, she'd get naked up there and seduce him—way better than winning.
Eager to conquer, be conquered, or whatever, Blade ran the last half-block to the door to Level 6. You never knew exactly where you'd come out when you went through a door to another level, but if his luck held, this one would go straight to Joe's Disco. He'd gotten really lucky the last time he'd been there: all three Hellcats and Dirk Hammer, too.
"I'm back!" he yelled, kicking the door open. "Lock up the livestock!"

Elsewhere on Level 5

Vexatia was hot on Blade's track, and she meant to have him—preferably in several pieces. The last thing Rock had said before she'd killed him was Blade's name. Even though Rock would regenerate, she killed him extra-hard for that.
Now for the game-wrecking slimeball he'd cheated on her with.
Flying around a corner, intent on pursuit, she didn't see Dementa coming around it in the other direction until too late. For the second time in much too short a time for her taste, they went down tangled together.
Dementa shoved Vexatia off as hard as she could. "Get out of my way, you sleaze."
"You get out of my way," Vexatia growled. "I need to kill Blade Damage about fifty times."
"Well, I'm busy too. Ask me why."
"No. Now move or I'll—"
"I lost the programmer."
"—deflate you." Only then did Dementa's last words register. "How's that again? You lost the programmer? What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"Why don't I believe you?"
"How should I know? All I did was ask it if it wanted to interface, and it took off running."
Vexatia smirked. "That would do it."
Not finding that funny, Dementa put her hands on her hips and sassed her back for a while. Vexatia didn't really listen—it was all something about not crawling to her for charity interfacing anymore—because she'd just noticed how crooked Dementa's cones were. Must've happened in the crash. For spite, she decided not to mention it.
"Fine. Ignore me. I'll finish you off later," Dementa said. "But right now, you'd better help me find the programmer. Morbida's not going to like it if we lose it."
"Who's this 'we'? It's not my problem."
"It is now. I guess I'd better tell you something."
"Tell me what?"
Dementa told her. Vexatia took it calmly right up to the baby-sister part, at which point she lost it and started chasing Dementa with the pitchfork.

Infernal Revenue: Level 7

Morbida had had a good day's slaughter and felt much better. What did she want now? Not interfacing. Not a frappucino. Maybe Me Time.
It was always Me Time for Morbida, of course, but some times were more about her than others. And what she wanted right now was mindless adoration.
"Surf's up," she said.
Pleased with her little joke, she kicked open the door of the Infernal Revenue Service—the evillest, most soulless place in the game, but the one with the most Internet connections. She'd thrown all the auditors into Lake Inferno earlier, so she'd have the place to herself.
Soon, she'd have the whole game to herself. But all in good time.

Outside Level X

Vexatia had chased Dementa toward Level X and was closing on her. Dementa was faster, but Vexatia was madder, so she'd catch her. The only questions were where and what weapons to use when she did.
"You could take it as a compliment!" Dementa yelled over her shoulder.
No, she couldn't. Having a real baby sister would be bad enough; having that for a sister was unforgivable insult. Gripping the pitchfork tighter, she picked up her speed.
She was just coming into throwing range when the door to Level X opened directly ahead of them. Damn. No killing allowed. Her only hope was a Hail Mary that would get Dementa before she got through the door.
Vexatia let fly at her quarry's back. The pitchfork had the distance, the speed, and the aim, and it would have worked, except that Dementa ducked at the last possible second.
Cursing, Vexatia watched the pitchfork sail through the open door. Then she heard a scream from the other side.
"I think we've found the programmer," Dementa said.

Infernal Revenue

This was more like it. The search engines were bringing up lots more matches for her now. Dementa was second again—higher than the little hussy deserved, but Morbida could live with it. For now.
Happily, she clicked over to the Ketchum & Skinner site to check the convention schedule again. Still an outrage, at those prices. Then she checked a few fan sites, taking extra time with the tributes on MorbidaIsATotalBabe.com. Finally, she dropped by the Litter Box. Most of the stories were unreadable, but she never got tired of seeing her name in print.
She scrolled down the index. Read that, done that, wouldn't even consider that. And Vexatia6969 had a new one out. Morbida wondered, again, why that little perv wasn't in jail.
There was also a new story by LoveBytes—another walking felony, in Morbida's opinion. Out of boredom, she clicked the link to "Such Sweet Sorrow" and scanned the first few pages with a cold eye. Delusion, obsession, lingerie—same old, same old. What was the matter with fans?
She'd deal with this LoveBytes person at the convention. Maybe she could figure out a way to delete her, too.

Level X

Vexatia and Dementa had no problem subduing Bunny, who was already subdued enough from her close call with the pitchfork. Even though Dementa had explained over and over that it couldn't have hit her, that it would've disintegrated as soon as it passed into Level X, Bunny wasn't reassured. Bad things had a way of happening inside this game. The safest course was to stay curled up in a ball, rocking gently.
"It still looks upset," Vexatia said. "I still want to kill it, but I guess I can wait till it feels better."
"Well, it's not going to feel better if it's just going to snivel like that. I think it's scared."
"You're the one who scared it."
"I did not. I just asked if it wanted to interface."
"Like I said," Vexatia remarked.
Dementa scowled. "You're asking for it, petunia."
"I've had it. I'll pass."
Insulted, Dementa reached for her dagger. But before she could start having any real fun, something in the wall started whirring.
Both Hellcats spun around. That slot hadn't been there before. Neither had the object that had just dropped out of it.
"Stay back," Vexatia warned, drawing her own dagger.
Staying back suited Dementa just fine. In fact, she got behind Bunny.
Vexatia advanced on the object. Small. Metal. Not breathing. Seemed harmless. Carefully, she picked it up with her free hand and turned it over a few times. "Looks like a key. Do we have keys in here?" She squeezed it experimentally. "Hey, look—it opens up like the Pincers of Cruelty."
That brought Dementa back out of hiding. "It's like the pincers?"
"Sort of. It seems kind of small to kill anything with. But I guess if you're mad enough—"
"Let me see that," Dementa said.
Shrugging, Vexatia handed it over. Dementa studied it for less than a second before she started laughing.
"What's funny?"
Dementa didn't answer directly. "Let's go to Oz."
"What for?"
"You'll see. Come on." She gestured in Bunny's direction. "And bring that with you. We're going to reprogram a programmer."

(c) 2002, K. Simpson
***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
CHAPTER NOTES: Vexatia and Dementa are singing "Coming into Los Angeles," a '60s song about contraband. // This might be a good time to repeat that the characters are not real people.	

CHAPTER 9

Level X: Oz

Morbida smelled it the second she stepped onto Level X. Her eyes narrowed. Then she heard the singing.
Not that it was musical, let alone a whole song —just a couple of lines about coming into Los Angeleeeeeeeees, bringing in a couple of keeeeeeeeeys, followed by shrieks of laughter.
In Morbida's experience, Arlo Guthrie had never been funny. But that smell explained it.
Oz.
Impatient, she kicked the door open. Dementa and Vexatia, sprawled among the poppies in an advanced state of bliss, didn't notice.
"You wastes of cyberspace," she growled. "On your feet."
Vexatia opened one eye. "You mean we're not?"
"Up. Now."
They tried. But in their condition, the mechanics were beyond them; they kept wobbling up, clutching each other, only to fall back down in a giggling heap.
Morbida watched the spectacle for a while and then yanked them up by their ears, twisting once — hard — for good measure.
"Hey! That's gonna hurt later!" Dementa cried.
"I'll see to it that it does," Morbida promised. "Where's the programmer?"
The blonde Hellcat blinked a few times. "Programmer?"
"The nerd. The one I left you in charge of. The one you'd better not have lost. The one—"
"You mean the nerd?"
Morbida sighed. It was always bad news when these nimrods went to Oz; sometimes, it took days to get their basic subroutines running again. "I mean the programmer. Where is she?"
"She means 'it,' Demmie," Vexatia said helpfully.
"'It' who?"
"The nerd."
Dementa blinked again. "It's a she? I thought it was an it. You mean the nerd?"
Vexatia tried to try again, but Morbida, out of patience, drew her dagger and started advancing on Dementa. "The programmer. Where? Is? She?"
"You mean Hellacia?" Dementa asked.
Morbida frowned. "Who?"
"Hellacia."
"Hellacia who?" Morbida asked.
"Hellac—Hey! That's sharp!"
Morbida had stuck her dagger under the point of Dementa's chin. "Hellacia who?"
"The nerd. I said—" She broke off and cocked her head, listening to nothing. "Oh, wow. Did you hear that chord?"
Killing her would be too good for her, Morbida decided. But killing wasn't allowed on Level X anyway. She made an urgent mental note to have the programmer fix that problem.
First, though, she had to find her.
And that Hellacia person, too.

In the Game

Bunny had never been so happy. She'd also never been so high, but that was beside the point. She was somewhere inside a computer game, lost, and she should have been scared to death, but she was a woman with a mission:
Max Justice.
"I'm a programmer," she reminded herself. "If I can find him again, I can program him. And if I can program him..."
Well, it would be the perfect relationship, wouldn't it?
She felt inside her catsuit for the roach clip, which she'd forgotten to give back to the Hellcats after that last hit. Too bad. She hadn't forgotten on purpose — much — and besides, you never knew when a thing like that might come in handy. What was it Dementa had said?
It's a key, honey. It works both ways.
Bunny was fairly sure that meant something. She might think about it later. But right now, she was high, dressed in red leather, and hot to interface. First things first. She had to find a computer.

Fictitious Hotel, Orlando

With less than 24 hours to go before GameWars, Janice was cranky. She hated the day before a convention; everything that could go wrong, would go wrong, but hadn't yet and was still only a threat.
Also, she had to brief the talent.
They were drifting in now, milling around the ballroom, ignoring her. Fine. But she'd have to start the meeting soon, if only to get it over with.
Irritably, she counted heads. Why were there so many of them? It was only supposed to be the three "Hellcats" and a couple of Lara Croft knockoffs this year, but even with their entourages, there shouldn't have been such a mob. What was different?
She checked again. "Vexatia" was drinking out of her purse—normal. "Dementa" was hitting on one of the knockoffs—normal. The volunteers were in a sullen, ignored knot by themselves—normal. So the problem had to be who it always was.
Janice hated her most of all.
Right now, "Morbida" was letting a fan in mirrored sunglasses monopolize her attention. She was only admiring herself in the mirrors, of course, but the fan didn't know that. Neither did the other fans, who were visibly dying with envy. They were all just mirrors to her; it could have been any of them. But none of them knew that.
Not my problem, Janice thought, watching them watch "Morbida" watch herself.
Then she noticed some of her staff in that crowd. Problem. She'd had to fire everyone after the last GameWars; there'd been a misunderstanding about who got to carry "Morbida's" luggage, which had ended in violence, property damage, and two arrests. It was "Morbida's" fault for sleeping with fans in the first place, and Janice had wanted to fire her instead, but Peter Head disagreed. She was Ketchum & Skinner's top attraction.
"But anybody could play Morbida," Janice had protested. "All it takes is a push-up bra and a pulse. Why do you have to have her?"
Head had almost smiled. "Because I can."
Because he did, he meant. Oh, well.
Janice checked her watch. Time to get started. She had a long riot act to read to the talent—no drinking, no flashing, no favors—and if they talked back as much as last year, it would take a while.
So she headed toward the "Morbida" people, intending to start by breaking them up. But a couple of burly creatures in baseball caps stopped her.
"What do you want?" the one with the pink hair asked.
She squinted at them, trying to determine gender. "It's business. I'm with K&S. I need to talk to the talent now."
The other one, a dog-faced redhead, shook its head. "She's busy."
"So am I. Now move. I need to—"
"No can do," the first one said.
It rubbed its nose, and Janice noticed that it had more than just the one ring. Briefly, she indulged a wish to grab both rings and pull in opposite directions. But she was a professional. Also, she didn't want to touch it. "I told you, this is business. We're meeting now. Tell her to—"
"We're not bothering her with this," the redhead said. "She'll meet when she's ready."
Bothered herself now, Janice scowled back. "She's ready when I say she's ready. Did I forget to tell you who I am? And who are you?"
It puffed out its chest in importance. "Personal assistant."
"No, you're fan club," the other one barked. "I'm personal assistance."
"Are not."
"Am too."
"Are not!"
"Am—"
Janice lost it at that point. By the time she finished, the ballroom was as still as a sheep pen, and even "Morbida" looked shocked.
"Now that I have your attention," she said, "we'll meet. Sit down. All of you."
They sat—all except the fan club/personal assistance/idiot people. They held up the wall at the back of the ballroom through the whole meeting, and Janice felt their hate.

In the Game

By luck, Bunny had found Infernal Revenue. She'd also found that last roach stuck in the clip. So she was having a fine time coding.
She was also making a few mistakes.

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

What in hell...?
Petra set her pipe down, rubbed her eyes, and tried looking again. Right the first time: A singing chicken was chasing Max Justice over the Brimstone Sea.
Disturbing. But kewl. But disturbing. She was almost sure it was wrong.
"I hope it's just the hash," she said.

To be continued
(c) 2004, K. Simpson
***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
CHAPTER NOTES: As an honorary Canadian, I mean no offense whatever—except to the drug spammers.	

CHAPTER 10

Arrested Development Software

Jeff Feynman was sitting at his desk, catatonic with gloom, staring at the trash that had been Bunny's floppy drive. He'd disassembled the drive down to the wires, but the key just wasn't in there. It couldn't have ejected itself, and he didn't believe in quantum physics, so someone had to have taken it.
But who? And how much did they hate him? There were cops all over the building looking for a missing girl, and the last thing he needed them to find—or be given—was a roach clip with his fingerprints on it.
"No more drug raps," his lawyer had warned the last time. "You'll do time if it happens again. But you'll have to do rehab first. And take my word, Jeff, you'll hate the Twelve Steps."
Unhappily, Feynman wondered whether it was too late to move to Canada. The whole country was selling drugs nowadays—and at 50 percent off, too. That would save him a bundle.
If, while he was wondering things, it occurred to him to wonder about the missing girl, he mastered the impulse.
He was still staring at the ruin of his life on his desk when he got more bad news.

On the Hellscape

It was going wrong again. This time, though, it was going worse. In every country, in every language, across all time zones, the game was playing itself.
Nobody could control it, let alone predict it. Avatars were changing costumes and gender at random. Weapons were firing BANG! flags. There were unconfirmed reports of bunny rabbits on Level 3. The Spiders of Anxiety were so nervous, they were molting.
And on the LoveBits list, they were frantic. Who was this Hellacia in "Such Sweet Sorrow" all of a sudden? And why was she doing that with a guy?

Ketchum & Skinner

All the phone lines were lit up, which pleased Peter Head. Business was good; accordingly, life was good. The "Lara Croft" hopeful last night hadn't been bad either.
Satisfied, he made another circuit of the phone room, already spending the profits from GameWars in his mind. With that new Hellcats release just out, and with a cut of the merchandising, K&S stood to have a banner year. He might stand to make, personally, at least—
"Mr. Head? Sir?"
He turned toward the nervous boy in the doorway, noting the wrinkles in his yellow K&S T-shirt. Head frowned. They'd all seen his memo about taking pride in the uniform; it was in the employee handbook; they'd all had to sign it. Dress codes existed for a reason, after all. Pride in the uniform meant pride in the company, which meant pride in—
"Mr. Head, it's urgent. It's about Hellcats."
"Outside," he said.
As they walked, he mentally signed the boy's pink slip. There was another unbreakable rule in the handbook: Never discuss company business in front of other employees.
As for Hellcats, that was someone else's problem; K&S was about marketing, not customer service. He'd let that sonuvabitch Feynman at the software company handle it. That would serve him right anyway; Head thought he might be on drugs.

On the Hellscape

John Michael chewed his fingernails, rereading the instant-messages log. They were in an ugly mood out there, waiting for him to post. Sometimes, it was hard being the official unofficial fan spokesperson; sometimes, people expected things from him.
He didn't want that responsibility. He just wanted to be the official unofficial fan spokesperson. Arrested Development gave him free betas; Ketchum & Skinner gave him passes; he had autographed pictures from all the "Hellcats" who'd ever worked at cons; he got fan mail himself. Everybody was always so nice to him. How could he say bad things about people who were nice to him?
He couldn't. They were his friends. And he was famous online.
Him! Famous! Perfect!
But...

HC35918: theyre scammming us. theyre putting bugs inon purpose becauz
Hellmaster_X: damn right
HC35918: they want us to buy more games becauz
RHunterOne: Greed pigs!
HC35918: theyre too stoopid to make the games work right the firsttime and
Hellmaster_X: we oughta boycott they only want us for our money how about it john michael???
HC35918: i bet ketcham n skinnr is in on it becauz they have the cons and we buy the tickets and
MrKitty: lets boycot. They just want our money John M, you out there?	

He had to say something back to them; they all depended on him. Also, he was starting to wonder himself. Jeff Feynman wasn't taking his calls so much anymore. And Ketchum & Skinner had tried to take back his free room at the Cleveland con last month; that Janice person had even been kind of snotty about it. Maybe they were forgetting who he was and what they owed him.
Him. The guy who'd made Hellcats on the Web. The most famous fan on the Hellscape. The one who—
—The one who wasn't going to Orlando this weekend because they said they couldn't pay his way this time. They said the block of rooms was overbooked, and they needed the room for a paying customer.
A customer? A customer? Crud. Maybe it was about money.
John Michael forgot three years of unswerving loyalty in a single fit of pique. They weren't his friends, were they? All they cared about was customers. Well, he could make them pay.
He opened a blank page on the site and started typing.

Fictitious Hotel, Orlando

Janice said terrible things to her cell phone. Then she threw it at the nearest wall, barely missing a caterer.
"Bad day?"
She didn't even have to turn to know who it was. "Vexatia" carried that signature scent of Jack Daniels and magnolias around with her—or maybe the scent carried her; it was hard to say.
"That was K&S," Janice said.
"So?"
She pondered. That jackass Head didn't want her talking to the help. It was even in her contract somewhere. On the other hand, the jackass had just made her unhappy, so...
"There's trouble with Hellcats," she said. "Something's gone wrong with the game again. We're getting cancellations."
"So? We don't do cancellations."
"I know that. But the fans don't know that. They want their money back."
"So?"
"It's all over the Internet. Some moron posted something and told them to get refunds tomorrow. They're all worked up."
"Vexatia" shrugged. "Screw 'em."
Against her own will, Janice smiled. That was K&S's unofficial motto. Still, a person couldn't go around wishing evil on the customers—unless she worked for a Fortune 500 company, of course. "I can't do that. They'll be here tomorrow. And I'm the one who has to talk to them."
"You?" The woman snorted. "I have to be nice to them. Did you ever do an autograph line? Do you know what they want?"
Janice feigned stupidity. "Autographs?"
"Boobs."
Well, yes, but surely she knew that. "It's just the costumes."
"Vexatia" glared at her. "You think? You stand behind me tomorrow and see. It's the same thing all the time. 'Are they real? Can I see them? Can I touch them? ' And that's just the girls. Why do you think I drink?"
"We have security," Janice reminded her.
"I'm talking about security."
Wearily, Janice rubbed her temples. "OK. I'll see about getting real security people tomorrow. Anything else, 'Vexatia'?"
"I'll let you know." A pause. "Don't call me 'Vexatia.' I'm Melanie. Call me Mel." She held out her purse. "Buy you a drink?"
Janice thought she might like this person after all.
"Don't mind if I do," she said, and drained the bottle.

In the Game: Oz

When the blonde bitch had gone, Vexatia and Dementa pulled themselves together—more or less—and tried to think.
"She seemed like she was in a bad mood," Vexatia said. "What does she want with the programmer?"
"I don't care. It bores me."
"We probably ought to think, Demmie. You heard Morbida. She said something about deleting us."
"She can't delete us. She's not a programmer."
"But the programmer's a programmer."
"It's a nerd," Dementa said decisively.
"That's what I said."
"You're not listening. It's a nerd. Nerds love us. It won't help the bitch delete us."
Vexatia hoped she was right. But what were the odds of Dementa's being right about anything? "How do you know?"
"I know something."
And what were the odds of that? "Like what?"
"It wants Max Justice. I told it we'll help it if it helps us."
Suddenly feeling a bit woozy—that last hit was still bouncing around her RAM—Vexatia processed a little harder. "What do we want?"
Dementa smiled. "To delete Morbida."
Grudgingly, Vexatia smiled back. She'd thought the same thing herself a million times but never dared to put it in words. "You're really evil, you know?"
"Sweet-talker."
"Want to interface?"
"Let's," Dementa said.

To be continued
 (c) 2004, K. Simpson
***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.	

CHAPTER 11

In the Game: Infernal Revenue

The machete whizzing past her head got Bunny's attention.
She also took note of the explosion when it hit the mainframe at the end of the room. What she didn't notice was Morbida standing directly behind her.
"If I were you," the Hellcat finally said, "I'd say hello now."
Bunny jumped. (One of her fingers slipped on the keyboard, causing a misfortune at a Hellbucks on Level 5, but it wasn't the first time a lava chai had caught fire.) The scary thing about being inside a computer game—besides the situation itself, of course—was that you couldn't tell when someone was sneaking up on you. Digital people had no aura, and they didn't have to make a sound.
"The next thing I would do is explain what I'm doing," Morbida said. "If I were you. Which I'm not, of course. You can start talking any time. You might want to start now."
Bunny was still too high to be worried, but something about the woman's attitude seemed hostile. Maybe it was that business with the machete.
She'd just drawn breath to speak when she turned into a chicken in red leather.

Arrested Development Software

The fifth time Peter Head called, Feynman took it, but only because it was the only way to make him go away.
"We're working on it," he said.
Head was unimpressed. He explained—again—how bad the PR was for Ketchum & Skinner.
"Fuck the PR," Feynman said, "and incidentally, fuck you. We're working on it."
The frigid silence that greeted these remarks rather pleased him. He'd made a career, and a life, out of defying the corporate swine; it made him feel less like one of them.
"Let me remind you how this works," Head finally said. "You make it; I sell it; they buy it. Are you with me so far?"
Feynman laughed, not very nicely. "I'm an artist."
"You're a pimp."
Now the silence was at Feynman's end.
"So am I," Head added. "It's business. Understand?"
"They're not real girls. They're digital."
"I don't care if they're blow-up dolls. They're damaged product. Fix them."
"How many times do I have to tell you? We're work—"
"The convention starts tomorrow. You've got until 8 o'clock. Fix the game by then, or we pull the Hellcats show. And we tell the customers to call you for refunds."
"Don't threaten me, Peter."
"Get busy," Head said, and hung up.
Bastard. Feynman checked his watch—quarter of 5. Then he buzzed his admin. "Nobody leaves," he growled. "Get R&D in here."

Across Town

He could have been Peter Jackson without the money, or at least without indoor plumbing. If he'd bathed in the recent past, you couldn't tell. It wasn't just the smell; it was also the thick, yellow, uncut fingernails and the pizza crumbs in the beard.
But you couldn't tell even that unless you could get close enough, and that would mean getting under the blanket with him. It was draped over him and the computer, making a tent—not quite the Fortress of Solitude, but then, he wasn't Superman.
Not on this side of the glass, anyway. On the other side...

Cruise Diesel bestrode the busty vixen like a colossus and flexed his rippling pecs. "Want a piece of this?" he said in his rich bass tones.
"Oooooooo! Yes!" she squealed.	

Too bad Hellcats hadn't worked out so well. Giving those three that artificial intelligence had been a big mistake; he wasn't going to make it again.

In the Game: Dementa's Room

They were sharpening their cones—good hygiene after an interface—when Morbida stormed in with a chicken.
"Explain this," she demanded.
Vexatia squinted at it. "Dinner?"
"It's the programmer."
"We're eating the programmer?" Dementa asked.
The chicken objected violently, but Morbida silenced it with a look. "I want to know exactly what the three of you were smoking."
"We smoked it all," Vexatia said.
Morbida made her very worst snake eyes at her. "Obviously."
"But we can get more if you want some."
"And turn into this?" She held the chicken up by its feet.
Dementa blinked in wonder. "Hey, it's got a red suit on!"
"Excellent," Morbida said. "I thought you'd notice right away, but I suppose sometime is better than never with you. Let me know when you figure out that it's dressed like the programmer was. I'll help you connect the rest of the pixels."
Insulted—she thought—Dementa set to work reasoning things out. They got the programmer high; the programmer turned into a chicken; they got high too; they might turn into chickens too. Or something like that.
Was that all? Sheesh. Morbida got so snotty sometimes.
"It's not that I care what happens to you," Morbida continued. "Personally, I'm hoping you both turn into banana slugs. That would be Christmas in Hell for me. But I'm not done with the programmer. So whatever you did to her, you're going to undo. Have I made myself clear?"
Vexatia thought so and decided to run for it. But at that moment, Bunny turned back into Bunny, slipping out of Morbida's grip and banging her head on the floor.
"Shoot—I had dibs on the drumsticks," Dementa complained.

Downtown Nowhere

Having been Vexatia6969 all evening, LoveBytes resumed her primary identity. First, though, she'd had to take off the chains, put on the pink baseball shirt, and cue up Mariah Carey. Image, after all, was everything, and her image was pink.
So was everything in her suitcase, which was already packed and waiting by the door. Mindful of her image as the best-loved romance writer on the Hellscape, she always wore her signature color at cons.
Now, with an hour left before she had to leave for the airport, she had time to crank out one more novel. The LoveBits had loved "Such Sweet Sorrow" and "More Sweet Sorrow," so it was time for "So Much More Sweet Sorrow."
She summoned the muse.

Poor, dear Vexatia, Dementa thought with sadness, sympathy swelling in her gentle bosom. Her dark-haired companion hadn't been the same since Morbida had hurt her so very, very badly. Was there no way she, Dementa, could take away the terrible pain?
Was there not hope where there was life?	

Awesome.
Typing madly, she rounded the first curve, headed straight for Sulfur Falls and the first naked-swimming scene. She wasn't sure how to spell "buoyant," but she could always look it up later.
Or not. Let that bitch Hellkitty have the literary snobs.
Dementa was just getting waterborne when the instant messages started flashing on LoveBytes' monitor. She read a few and then shrugged. Hellacia Vengeance? Never heard of her. Must be someone else's story.
Wait—what were the Bits doing reading someone else's story?
Displeased, she fired off a response.

If I have the graciousness to create these works for you, you should have the graciousness to read them. If you read them, you know I never created a Hellacia. Please do your homework.	

Apologies instantly started scrolling up the message window. She read a few and then went back to the business of creation.

In the Game: Morbida's Dungeon

She'd finished debriefing the other two Hellcats and had sent them away to sleep it off—not together. But Morbida still had a few questions for Bunny.
"This Jerry," she said. "This person you say programmed us. Tell me again. Just exactly what's wrong with him?"
Bunny considered a smart remark, but Morbida was still holding the Flamethrower of Pain, which had definitely hurt. So she gave the straightest answer she could.
"And these problems are his fault?" Morbida asked. "You're sure of this?"
She wasn't. She was fairly sure that she'd done something to the code herself—by accident; she would never have turned herself into a chicken on purpose—but it probably was Jerry's fault somehow. He'd written all the code for Hellcats up until Ted fired him; maybe he'd put something in for revenge.
She'd been high, of course, but she did think she'd seen that Trojan horse parked outside Joe's Disco a while ago. So...
"Absolutely," Bunny said.
"Can you give me control of the game?"
"Not unless I have all the code."
"And this Jerry has it?"
"I don't know. I mean, probably, somewhere. But I don't know. We were looking for it at ADS, but we couldn't—"
"Do you know his address?"
Bunny started to say she'd never been to his apartment, thank God, but then remembered where she was. "His IP address, you mean? I can probably find it."
"Find it. Now," Morbida said.

To be continued
 (c) 2004, K. Simpson
***
MORBIDA'S GAME
K. Simpson

DISCLAIMERS, CREDITS, & E-MAIL: See the readme file.
CHAPTER NOTES: There is no such thing as The Thing (I hope), but any resemblance to pop "spirituality" movements is purely intentional.	

CHAPTER 12

One of Many Bars
Fictitious Hotel

Janice and Mel had had a few, and the bartender wasn't sure about letting them have a few more. But Mel adjusted her top strategically, which helped him conquer his doubt.
"Does that always work?" Janice asked.
Mel shrugged. She was off the clock; that one had been for free.
"Men," Janice said dismissively. Then she remembered that she was at a Hellcats con. "And women."
"Whatever. You going to finish that drink?"
Janice tried to do the math — how many had they both had now? — in case it was time to stop. Then she remembered, again, that she was at a Hellcats con. She signaled the bartender for another round.
"Make mine doubles," Mel said. "I still know where I am."
Truly, the woman was a soul sister. Janice smiled at her. "Why do we do this to ourselves? Work at these conventions, I mean. It can't be the money."
Mel gave her an are-you-crazy? look. "It's the glamour of show business, honey. The private jets. The limos. The red carpets. You know."
Janice was already laughing. "The mink coats. The diamond tiaras."
"You bet tiaras. I'm a star. A big fat honking star." She scowled at her glass, willing it to fill up again. "For an hour every couple of months, to a mess of sweaty nerds who don't get out much. But I guess it beats working at Wal-Mart. Why do you do it?"
"The power," Janice said.
Whereupon they both started laughing so hard that the bartender cut them off.

One of Many Suites
Fictitious Hotel

There was power at the hotel that night, though. In a semiluxury suite on the top floor, "Morbida" and ten of her closest personal fans were about to do The Thing.
That wasn't its real name, of course. But "Morbida" couldn't ever remember the real name, even though it had changed her life.
She was almost sure that it had, anyway. She'd been too coked-up and drunk in those days to remember much about rehab. But she did remember The Master.
He'd taught her The Thing, which got her clean and sober and changed everything, as replacement addictions will. The Master had been pleased. Just before he left her (for a younger model in another rehab), he'd charged her with spreading the word. "The power of your example as a celebrity," he'd told her, "could change the world."
"Morbida" liked that.
"And you can charge anything you want," he'd added.
Even better.
So she'd sold The Thing to her personal assistants, who swore it changed their lives. Then she'd sold it to some fans at a con, and verily, it changed their lives too.
The assistants were in deprogramming centers now, and the fans were under psychiatric care, but those were details. The Thing did change people.
The ten with her tonight were proof of that. They already worshipped her, and she hadn't even run through their credit limits yet.
Closing her eyes, "Morbida" took a cleansing breath, inhaling positivity, exhaling negativity, drawing the cosmic green light into her soul. "It's all about meeeeeeeeeeeee," she intoned.
"It's all about meeeeeeeeeeeee," they repeated.
"It's all about meeeeeeeeeeeee."
Somewhere in the room, a girl was already sniffling, but she joined in the chorus anyway. "It's all about meeeeeeeeeeeee."
"Now join hands," "Morbida" said, "and we'll do that for five minutes."
The mild hyperventilation was mind-altering; the repetition was hypnotic; The Thing was loose among them.
Her current personal assistants, waiting in the hall, placed bets on which one they'd have to drive to the emergency room tonight.

In the Game:
Infernal Revenue

The real Morbida, who would have dissected the fools and served them on toast points, was still unaware of The Thing. At the moment, she was unaware of anything except frustration.
Bunny felt it acutely herself. She'd cracked the ADS servers and found Jerry's IP, but she still hadn't caught him online. "I think he's cloaked," she said.
There was that word again. "Do all your people watch 'Star Trek'?" Morbida snapped.
"Yes," Bunny said.
"Why?"
"How should I know?"
It was a good question. There was a long silence.
"That's your next project," Morbida declared. "I want to understand your species. Find this out for me. Make it so."
"Yes, sir."
"But first, find this Jerry."
"Yes, sir."
"And don't call me 'sir.'"
"Yes, sir," Bunny said.

On the Hellscape

The LoveBits had lapped up "So Much More Sweet Sorrow" and were ready for much, much more. But LoveBytes was offline now, en route to Orlando, leaving them to their own devices.
It was time for Otherfic.
The Bits loved Otherfic — fan fiction of LoveBytes' fan fiction. If Bytes ever found out, they'd be in big trouble; she'd warned them over and over about her intellectual-property rights.
But she was on a plane right now, wasn't she?
Someone in Sheboygan started it this time:

Ares, the God of War, was having a bad day. So he put Xena, Gabrielle, and Aphrodite in a computer game. So they were Hellcats, and they could do anything they wanted to do to each other. They wanted to go skinny dipping first, so they did.	

Hundreds of fans on the LoveBits Central message boards shivered in happy anticipation. Last time, it had been Dax, Counselor Troi, and Dr. Crusher, but this was lots more fun. And they could probably play for a couple of hours before they purged the logs.

In the Game:
Dementa's Room

"Aha," Dementa said, beaming at the screen of her pink laptop.
Vexatia, waiting out the last of her high, didn't look; she was too busy lying on Dementa's chaise lounge, keeping her eyes shut tight and breathing deeply. "Aha what?"
"Aha I can delete Morbidas now."
That was good enough for Vexatia to open one eye. "You can?"
"Just did. Five of them on Level 2." Proudly, she added, "Then I put in five of me."
Vexatia processed a few unprintable thoughts.
"It's the nerd," Dementa explained. "It did something to the code. I can get into the ADS servers now. Do you know what this means?"
"Do I want to?"
"Do you want to delete Morbida for real?"
Vexatia blinked. "Can we?"
Dementa tapped furiously on the keyboard for a few seconds. The noise of small explosions came through the laptop's tiny speakers. "She's toast in Red Rocks. No more clones. Want me to take her out at Hellbucks next?"
"I think I like you again. Want to interface?"
"Later," Dementa said.

Arrested Development Software

Feynman was still screaming at the R&D department when his admin opened the conference-room door a crack. Being all warmed up, he almost screamed at her, too, but she already looked upset enough to satisfy him.
"What is it now?" he asked. "If it's that bastard Head again, you tell him to—"
"It's Hellcats, Mr. Feynman. Morbida's gone again."
Feynman promptly threw the nearest laptop at the door, missing his admin but taking out an R&D man. "Bring me a programmer!" he roared.

Across Town

Jerry had stepped away from the blanket to get another bag of Doritos, so he didn't hear his firewall beeping. Neither did he see Bunny in the bottom-right corner of his monitor.
He might not have recognized her, in all that red leather and with all that makeup, but he would certainly have recognized Morbida leaning over her shoulder.
For just a second, when Bunny leaned farther forward, her face pressed into the monitor, as though the glass were soft...
And then Jerry's antivirus program kicked in.

To be continued
 (c) 2004, K. Simpson