Complete Atopia Chronicles

Martin, Vicious and Willy had peeled off to follow closely behind in their GTO, and the low throaty growl of both engines mixed together in a bone shaking symphony. By now they would have put a general call out to all the special weapons squads, so we’d have hundreds of them chasing us down as we tried to leave the city.

Our gameworld audience had spiked to over six million and was climbing fast. This was going to be a great show.

“You hit?” asked Sid. He climbed down out of the sunroof.

“Yeah,” I replied, putting a hand under my shirt, wincing. My finger found a small hole on the side of my ribcage. “Not too bad. A through and through I think, but it would help if you wrapped me up. You hit?”

“Ah, I think my ear got blown off,” he said, holding one hand to a bloody mess on the side of his head as he doubled over in pain, “but the real problem is a gut shot.”

“Bad?”

It looked bad.

“It hurts like hell but it’ll bleed out slow, I should live for another couple of hours.”

Ah, not so bad then. I smiled. Maybe we’d make it out of Los Angeles after all.

As we sped up the street, I could see something walk into our way.

A pedestrian? Not cops, anyway. It was someone in a green suit, hunched over, and then there were more of them, blocking the road. Cars lined both sides of the street so I couldn’t swerve off, and I could hear growing sirens in the distance with flashing lights coming at us from all angles. Up ahead it had all the appearances of a herd of little green men now, completely blocking the road.

What the hell?

I jammed on the breaks and we skidded, squealing to a halt as we ploughed into the first couple of greenies, bumping over them messily amid roars of pain. The other car skidded to a stop behind us.

Furious, I flew open my driver side door as we stopped, weapon in hand, to confront whatever was going down here. Sid popped back out of the sunroof, grimacing, with both cannons out aiming front and center.

A short, stocky green man with pointy ears and a broad forehead, wearing spiked shoulder pads and holding an enormous axe, ambled up to me.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

I could see he had some vampires with him too.

“We are against the discrimination shown to the Bangladeshi.”

“What?” Then it dawned on me.

“Sid!” I yelled. “Sid, did you set the authenticated login to this world when you created it?”

Silence. Except for the growing whine of the approaching sirens.

“Sid?!” I asked again, looking back at him.

“Ah shoot,” he replied, wincing in pain. He looked down at the blood that was oozing from his gut wound. “I forgot.”

Dejectedly he banged both of his weapons down on the roof of the car.

These were obviously Comment Trolls. Without authenticated login, people could just connect into this world anonymously, which was fine if you just wanted to watch, but anonymity tended to bring out the worst in people.

With the massive audience we’d accumulated for this game, and with the login anonymous, we’d just attracted the mother lode of Comment Trolls. Hundreds of them were now blocking the road. They’d use the opportunity to broadcast their opinions, whether they had anything to do with this world or not.

“I’m sorry dude,” continued Sid, waving a gun in the air. “I was just so busy. My mother was over, I had a splinter set this world up…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Perhaps I could reason with them.

“Dude, please, this is 1988 Los Angeles,” I complained to the lead Comment Troll. “We’re just trying to get out of here. There were no trolls in ‘88 Los Angeles, and no vampires either.”

I considered this for a moment. On closer inspection those were Forum Vampires he had with him. They could be useful.

“Maybe there were vampires. But come on guys, please.”

My dimstim stats were dropping as fast as our gameworld audience. I had to do something entertaining, and quickly. The head Comment Troll was right in my face now. He smelled real bad and had some butt ugly oily pimples going on.

“Master,” he growled at me.

Well, at least he was playing along in character. Not a total asshole, then. Perhaps there was an opportunity here.

“Master, we are sorry, but this is an open gameworld, and we have the right to express our opinions here.”

I nodded my head.

“Yeah, this an open gameworld, but only if you’re coming to get laid and get paid,” I explained in a sing song tone, smiling to expose my two gold capped front teeth and holding a West Side finger salute near my chest. “Look if you want to join the Bloods or the Crips I’m down with that, but don’t be a bitch and mess up our game, homie.”

I shrugged and held my hands up, wide eyed, shaking my head.

“Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“I’ll tell you who I am, my brother,” I said, bringing my .357 Magnum up between his eyes and pulling the trigger.