Soda Pop Soldier by Nick Cole Page A

fat gibbous moon, swollen, corpulent, and odd, makes its way across the night as its light falls on a lonely desert. In the distance, a rising tower, more perversion or malignant growth than structure, stands out in the moonlit night. Its crazy architecture rises, feasible only in computer-rendered graphics, pushing away from a crumbling city that is slowly being consumed by the dunes of an endless desert. I let go of a fading hope I’d harbored for a simple AK and the clear-cut purpose of merely machine-gunning my way through this game until I’d earned enough money for rent.
    Modern warfare is my specialty. Fantasy, not so much.
    The spire is jagged and thorny, a black silhouette against the desert night, rising from the jumble of odd-angled ruins in an arid waste devoid of anything living, all made colder by the moon’s pale light. Only the most morbid tourist would choose such a place for an online vacation.
    A piano in minor chord ponderously strikes cryptic notes as the camera pulls focus. I’m scanning for landmarks, features, anything I can use later to navigate my way to some cash and prizes. I don’t see any obvious enemies. Yet.
    â€œEven now, pretty and not so pretty little things,” continues the announcer abruptly, “you’re awakening from your crypts, graves, tombs, and sewers . . .” On-screen the view switches to a collapsing graveyard in some courtyard near the the tower, forgotten and abandoned millennia untold. Gravestones with Gorey-like inscriptions denote fallen warriors. The sound of grinding stone caressing stone erupts across the ambient soundscape. A necrotic hand pushes from the earth. The piano continues to strike those minor chords, alternating now with other diminished chords that seem full of suffering and hollow all at once, turning the soundtrack into a march, into a call to nothing good.
    I hate the undead.
    They make me jittery. In most games, they just come at you in waves. Guns are basically useless. In fact, most things are useless against the undead. In the end it comes down to baseball bats and lead pipes. Which doesn’t matter—the more of them you send back to death, the more of them appear. I always wonder, after games I’ve played that involve the undead, after killing a thousand, two thousand, what that does to my mind. It can’t be good. One time I played a game where I had to kill fifty-seven-thousand-plus undead just to unlock an achievement. I can distinguish between reality and games, but . . . some people can’t. What does killing fifty-seven thousand humanlike once humans do to players?
    The undead are a hard way to spend a thousand bucks.
    A hard way to make rent.
    â€œPrisoners and fiends, victims and in-betweens . . . ,” continues the game’s unseen announcer. The rattling of chains, a tortured scream, a woman sobs. Everything happens fast and just moments before the game reveals my avatar, the unknown character I’ll play as I attempt to beat this game, I see the tower above and hear the whimpering of a child.
    â€œRazor Maiden, devourer of the innocent, eater of life, queen of hell, commands that you die tonight, or live trying.”
    In these online tournaments, and might I add, illegal open source online tournaments, the goal is to figure out the game and then beat it before all the other players find and beat you. You’ve got to start somewhere, and often that’s a game in and of itself that must be beat before you can actually start beating the main game. Just like life. I’m guessing the game I’ll be playing to start with is “escape.” But from where and how, I don’t know just yet. Along the way is where I’ll really make money. Contests, treasure troves, even in-game bargains can lead to big cash and interesting prizes. Or so I’ve been told.
    The intro is over and now my story, the story of my avatar, begins.
    â€œPlease be Light,