Coda grunted as he used unaccustomed muscles, which rippled under the veiny gray-white skin. The System had kept the player strong enough, but he hadn’t done so in years, so it felt like an out-of-body experience. “I hate,” he said but didn’t bother to complete the thought.

  The face of a figure leaned over him and showed teeth under transparent skin. It was a post-human creature, not a player, as the skin had grown over the hookups because they had rarely or never been used. “We all hate appointments. Come, the Minister wants you at the R Dome.”

  What was worse than traveling in this sack of flesh? What could be so important that Coda must attend in person? It made no sense, and it gave him a headache. There’s something I haven’t felt in a long time.

  He swirled the throbbing temple, and he followed the naked figure and its protruding spine to the transport and ducked inside. The seat felt hard and cold on his skin, pressing on the black ports on his back.

  The transport shot through the tunnels into a glass tube, presenting the outside world. Under pondering cumulous clouds, the landscape hazed in the moist and smoky atmosphere. Massive bugs circled trees, the high exogen allowing them their size. Humanity abandoned this world when it didn’t integrate into the System, so there were no objectives, rewards, progression, narratives, or anything but metal gardeners in unending wildlands.

  This was just a zoo for the Observer to watch.

  The rough interior of a mountain replaced the view, and the transport squealed as it slowed.

  The driver’s headset tilted, but not enough to look back. “Get out.”

  In any world but this one, Coda would have killed the driver. But he barely retained the strength to walk. He felt heavy, like once again feeling gravity after swimming.

  He scanned the vast hall. Robotic vehicles moved containers into and out of pods. Things flickered from poorly maintained lighting. No one knew what the Automation did besides make noise and tinker with flesh and metal.

  His ankle ached as he crossed the room. Did the interfaces really keep them healthy? He was eighty-seven and already falling apart—or would he be replaced bit by bit until he was one of these creatures that haunted this world like ghosts?

  The elevator column rose upward into the darkness. He propped himself by the control panel and pressed the button only to have his fingernail crack and bleed.

  When the doors parted, a ragged creature rolled its eyes under heavy lids, and it looked him over. “You should carry a gun. There’s vermin, you know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Coda said, feeling uncomfortable at the sight. He felt so tired he propped himself while waiting for the other to shuffle out of the elevator. Finally, he entered and pressed three hundred.

  The Minister better have a good reason for this. I hate this fucking place.

  Ding. The doors opened, and a bright corridor met Coda. He raised a frail hand to blot out the light. Everyone wore goggles, but he’d left them at his station.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The hallway seemed to stretch forever and looked like a historic hotel reconstruction. He glimpsed himself in polish gold trim. He opened his mouth to see if he still had teeth, and he looked like a corpse with a tongue. The teeth appeared healthy, but damn, did he need a meal and some sunlight and maybe a facelift or three.

  A door opened, and a thing took up the space with limbs and sections like an insect. Its eyes were hidden behind a green sheet of glass. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t make it.”

  “I may not make the last few steps.”

  The Grand Minister held no amusement. “Funny.”

  The room inside stood in stark contrast to the antique hallway—tubes of green gurgled and wires ran in tidy bunches. The dark space was all technology and chemistry. Coda did not like either of these things. He preferred to be in a fantasy world like the one promised after the minuscule-to-colossus world the System queued.

  The insect-like man slammed an arm on a metal table. “These extra arms aren’t under my control half the time. The AIs do whatever they want with my body.”

  Coda slid into the chair by the table and rubbed his thigh's thin, pale skin. The muscles trembled under his touch. Fuck this.

  “Yes, sit. Let me bring up your file. Coda, eighty-seven, more trophies than I can count, and consistently the highest-ranked player.”

  “Except here.”

  Mandibles opened and closed. “Well, there’s only one level here, and it’s shit, isn’t it?”

  “Why am I in your office talking about ranks?”

  “We have an NPC problem.”

  Non-players were not a threat to anyone. “Harmless.”

  “If a player kills another player in the game, they respawn.”

  “I’m aware. The System intervenes before there’s too much damage to the mind and puts you somewhere else.”

  “Well, when an NPC outside the parameters kills a player, it can cause brain injury or death?”

  “Outside?”

  “Yes, they’re breaking protocol. Perhaps it’s some kind of virus.”

  “Just perform the Reset on the troublesome ones.”

  “Even that might not work. Their memories persist, and they’ve also found a way to retrieve old ones.”

  “So, we’ll go extinct, and they’ll go on forever, mindlessly going through worlds.”

  “There’s an answer to our survival: the Hard Reset. Every Category One NPC must be killed, and the Great Reset must be performed. The system will then erase all residual memories and produce clean-slate NPCs.”

  Coda shifted in his seat. A pressure restricted his breathing, and he focused on steady breaths. The body wasn’t meant for stress. “Impossible to kill them all. There are billions of them.”

  “No, not Category One. There are only hundreds of thousands. You’ll have to kill millions, though. Hell, billions if you want. Kill them all and let the System sort them out.”

  Coda wasn’t going to argue. The man must have a plan. “How?”

  “What if you had a new class? A magic class stronger than all the others called the Void Mage.”

  A jolt of excitement ran through Coda, and he coughed. “I’m interested.” It wasn’t long before he was hooked into a new interface. He lowered himself into the tube of ooze. He’d long gotten used to the feeling of drowning, but the liquid kept him alive.

  Eel-like creatures swam to him and latched on, their toxins vital to the process. Their brains ran along their length, but their intelligence served a single purpose: to entangle him with a new body around a different sun.

  Then, he was in freefall above the minuscule-to-colossus world. The wind rushed up and rippled his face. The feeling of strength returned. A fresh, powerful body plummeted from the atmosphere. A valley appeared below him.

  He remembered feeling a thrill during freefall. Those days were long gone, but he still loved power, and this new class promised more than he’d ever had.