From Pixels to Peril

“Eat.” my mom demanded. She was standing over me, plate in one hand, the other on her hip. I slid my headset off sheepishly, apologizing as I looked at the sandwich in her hand. My stomach growled at the sight of it. “Thank you,” I said, drawing out the “u” as I took it from her. She shook her head as she turned to leave the room. “I want you off that game tomorrow, Shayla,” she said halfway down the hall. “Go do something out of the house. We live next to the beach, for christ’ sake.”

I scoffed. Yeah, okay.

“Effie! What the--” I heard from my headset. I picked them up, fumbling with them while talking into the mic. “Sorry!” I said, mouth full. I swallowed. “Ugh. Sorry! My mom walked in and handed me a sandwich.” I took another bite. “Can your mom make me a sandwich?” one voice said. A few people agreed with him while others giggled... I almost choked with laughter. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I set myself up for that.”

“Kleeny, why the hell are you dead?” I asked. His character had been alive moments before. He said nothing. “Kleeny.” No one answered still. “... hello?” I asked. “I think he went AFK.”

I ignored them; he didn’t get to have excuses today. “Kleeny, I know you can hear me.” I said with feigned sweetness. Still nothing.

I could hear muffled giggles from some others. I cupped my hand around my mic and spoke low enough my mother wouldn’t hear. “Kleeny, put the bong down and rez your ass,” words said with a tinge of annoyance. The entire channel erupted into giggles. I saw his icon light up, indicating he was speaking. “Yes, Mom,” he mocked.

“This is why we can’t run Festa. Because Kleeny can’t keep his shit together long enough to kill trash,” a few “oooh’s” followed. A minute later my phone lit up with a text from ‘Nick’ that read, ’Ur mean. :(’ I chuckled. Kleeny was the guild clown, but he was also one of my best officers and friends in the game. He was the first person I’d given my phone number to in-game because I’d needed someone to call if I thought a date was going south to fake my way out of it. My mom didn’t know I was going on said date. So, the best option?

Give an unknown person across the US my phone number so I could call them if my date turned out to be a serial killer so I could get out of it. Or worse.

Yeah. Smart.

He was supposed to be leading a group to kill trash, so we didn’t get destroyed on the way to kill the boss, but his character’s corpse was currently laying at the feet of mine. I sighed. “Can someone rez Kleeny, please?” Two healers were at his side almost immediately, casting resurrection spells. “Thank you!” he said, drawing out the word exactly how I had to my mother minutes before. I laughed off-mic at it, but would not give him the satisfaction of hearing it.

He absolutely would have continued to act the clown for the rest of the night.

It was Friday, which meant raid night on the game. We aimed to finish around midnight, but with Kleeny sleeping on the job, that wasn’t going to happen. This was a mildly difficult raid, and this would be the third week we didn’t complete it for various reasons. I tried my best to hide the irritation in my voice. “When does everyone have to log tonight? Anyone not able to stay on after twelve?” Text popped up on my game chat client. “I’m gone after twelve thirty.” It read. “Okay, thanks, Tik.” Tiktu was my main healer for the night, so if she couldn’t be on past then, we’d have to get someone to change specializations. “Effie, I’ve gotta bounce after one too. Folks got onto me today for not spending time with them while I’m home.” I sighed. There goes the tank. Without Nax, we’d have to call it when he left. “That’s okay. Thanks, Nax, mine too.” The channel got the quietest it had been all night, indicating morale was slacking.

“Hey it’s ten. It’s not midnight yet. Come on, guys. Let’s push it until we can’t anymore.”

By the time we made it to the last boss, it was twelve fifteen. The boss took anywhere from thirty to forty-five minutes to kill. “Tik, are you good for this or do you need to leave?” She responded via a message again in the game. “I’m good; let’s do this.” “Yay! Okay guys, let’s do this, Nax, whenever you’re ready. Kleeny, don’t fuck up.” More giggles.

We completed the raid at one A.M. on the nose, breaking the near month-long losing streak. I stretched, feeling the stiffness of sitting still for so long. “Be right back.” The nightly skeleton crew was all that remained, but that was still about a hundred members.

I slid my headset off and stood up, stretching my legs. My stomach growled in protest, and I realized that sandwich had been the only thing I’d eaten since the coffee I’d had that morning.

Well.. morning for me, two in the afternoon was hardly morning.

I made myself another sandwich, let the dog out, and sat on my phone scrolling Facebook while I ate. My summer news feed was easy to break down. Disney, Universal, Beach, boat. Disney, Universal, beach, selfie. That’s it. “Does anyone who lives in this state ever leave it..?” I whispered to myself. “Nope.” A voice came from behind me, and I jumped, startled to find someone else awake‌. “Jesus Christ, Ryan, don’t do that!” I breathed out. He grinned from ear to ear, obviously enjoying the fact that he had scared me. He set a rock down in front of me, and I immediately picked it up, examining it. “Found this today. Do you know what it is?” I raised an eyebrow. “On the ground?” It seemed unlikely for the green glass-like rock in my hand. To the unfamiliar eye, it may appear as just a piece of glass. But this was far more valuable than that, given the ridges, the way the color deepened to near black in places for seemingly little reason.

He nodded, shrugging.

“Then someone dropped it. It looks like raw tourmaline, chrome. No way it was sitting on the ground. I don’t even have one of these.” He reached for it back, examined it with a huh, as if he knew what he was looking at, and then handed it back with a smirk. “Well, keep it then.” I grinned at him, placing it in the pocket of my hoodie to sit with the rest of my collection later. “What are you still doing up, anyway?” I asked. He smiled goofily. “What are you still doing up?” Throwing it back at me, not answering the question. I frowned, taking another bite of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Raid night,” I said through my chews.

“Nerd.”

I ignored the retort.

He began making his own sandwich while I let the now protesting dog back in. “Hey wanna go to the beach tomorrow? Mom said she wanted me out of the house.” Ryan sighed. “Yeah, she said the same thing to me.” Ryan played more first-person shooters on consoles, but also had a pretty active life outside the house, so she rarely got onto him about it. Of course, in the summer sometimes he had a hard time getting rides. He was fifteen, just two years younger than I, which meant no driving without a parent. “Maybe we can get Mom to come, have a family day,—““and then she’d stay off our backs for a while?” I finished his sentence. He laughed into the bread. “Yeah.”

My phone screen lit up, and we both looked down at it. Before I could even read it, his hand snatched it up.

“Ryan, give it back,” I said, anger flooding me. I protected my phone as if it were my lifeline. Not only that, if one of my guildies had messaged me, which I was pretty sure it was, given the time and the fact no one else did, usually, it would prompt questions. I was a terrible liar. “Ooh, who’s Cam?” he said teasingly. I felt the heat of embarrassment on my face.

Shit. Cam was Nax. I had saved all my officers on my phone as their actual names, for just such an occasion as if my mom sees my contact list, or Ryan, in this case. My mom wouldn’t approve of texting strangers. “They could be a 40-year-old pedophile,” she would say. No one had my phone number if I’d not talked to them, though. Nax, or Cameron, was twenty something. Definitely would get in trouble there, even though we joked constantly about him being the guild dad, and never once had he made me feel uncomfortable.

My brother was reading the message.

“Ryan! Give it back!” I said louder, lunging for my phone. He, of course, dodged me. He was laughing but stopped, now looking at me with a smirky, concerned look. “Does Mom know you’re texting people from your game?” I reached for my phone again, and he let me have it, obviously getting what he wanted. Still, he looked at me for an explanation to his question. I glanced down at my phone. Nax was asking about running for a specific item from the next raid we planned to take on. Thank Nax, couldn’t have waited, could it? I thought to myself.

“No,” I said, finally answering my brothers’ question. “And unless you want Mom to find out about where you actually were last weekend, you better not tell her.” I didn’t bother looking up. That would have even made me angry, but if Mom found out, I was pretty sure I’d lose my phone for the next 2 months until college started. I didn’t want to take that chance, and I made sure that if I went down, he went down with me. Lose-lose. I liked those odds.

Still, I felt terrible about the blackmail already. He had gone out to play paintball in the middle of the night, something I saw as harmless, and had come home at 6 in the morning. I was still awake playing games when he got back, and he’d begged me not to tell. Mom had told him he couldn’t go because of his grades at the end of the school year. He went anyway. I did not plan on snitching. Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have even if he did tell her, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Whatever. I’m surprised Mom doesn’t question anyone you text, seeing as the only friends you have are on a game or on a shelf in rock form. You’ve hardly left your room since graduating.” He spat out before swinging around and stomping off to his room.

That one hurt. We had moved a little over 2 years ago, and he had immediately made friends with people in his class. Even talking to people was difficult for me, however. I even stopped trying to interact with the tourists after an awful experience last year, avoided my favorite gaming cafe just in case they came back until after the season was over. There were people I talked to during the school year, but when summer hit this year, all but one of them were off celebrating graduation or on vacation to exotic places with their families. Or Disney. And that friend had a much more exciting group of friends she could entertain than I.

We moved from Atlanta to here because of our mom’s job. But Navarre was a quiet place, and the average wage was above middle-class for anyone who wasn’t retired. Our mom’s company made a deal on our house and basically owned it; it was the only way we could afford to live there. Mom made more than the average person, but because she was a single mom, our household averaged less than most. Sometimes I felt like we just didn’t belong here. He was right. I spent more time examining the nearly two hundred rocks on my shelves I’d collected over the years than I did with the surrounding people. Originally, I was excited to move here. I loved the beach as a kid. But it got old fast, and the heat was unbearable in the summer. No, I’d much rather spend my time inside, playing Planet in Peril with my in-game friends and guild.

In the game, I was Effie, Chaos Elf Assassin. Guild leader of the Chaos Angels. At over four thousand members, we were the largest Legion guild on Pipspect, the number one US private server for the biggest MMORPG in the world. Pretty big pants to wear.

And I wore them well.

Planet in Peril was the fastest-growing MMO to hit the market in 2003. Just two years later and their first expansion hit the market in 2005, adding two races, Yetire and Lup’Gas, and a class, Druid.

The expansion came a little too quickly, some might say — thanks to an error in the code that people exploited, private servers were born. Which allowed folks to make servers that could be double experience, double the drop rate, smaller communities, and best of all? Free.

Maybe just.. don’t question the legality of it.

This Guild I’d started at fourteen, six months after the server launched. The growth was unexpected. I was a month away from eighteen now, and I was just as proud of it. I’d made friendships, and I felt like a leader, because I was, at least in the game. The Legion made up ‌one half of the game, called a faction. Unity was the name of the other faction. They were enemies of the Legion. My guild formed before guild maximums were instilled, and Chaos Angels exceeded that limit by three thousand. Which meant my guild was one of the biggest of both factions, by a long shot.

In the real world, I was Shayla, human. Teachers’ pet, silent student, collector of rocks. I was so quiet, in fact, that someone asked me if I was new to the school during the second semester this year. Sometimes I felt like my friends were only nice because they took pity on me. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true. But part of me believed it. I felt awkward. I felt like no one liked me. I was five foot three, and my weight was.. more than average. I felt somewhere between curvy and fat, but at school, I always felt more fat than curvy. I was clumsy. I stammered when I was nervous, which was most of the time. My mother bought my clothes, mostly because I didn’t have anyone to shop with, but also because I was never interested in the latest trends and styles. My request was black. Always black. When I went shopping with ‘friends,’ they’d always go into stores without a plus-size section, which meant I was just tagging along for the ride and company. I had people I called my friends, but rarely did we do anything outside of school.

I put my dish away and slumped back to my computer, rock still in my pocket. I put my headphones back on and checked for people in our voice channel. Kleeny, Mortessa, Gabe, and to my surprise, Nax. “Nax, I thought you were going to bed at one?” It was nearly two in the morning. “You know I can’t stay away, Effie.” I heard him coo. “You should do what we are doing tomorrow. Family day at the beach.” I said. I had no idea whether where his family lived had a beach. “Don’t listen, Nax; everyone knows people who live in Florida don’t actually go to the beach.” Gabe chimed in. I snorted. “Gabe, where were you for raid night? We missed you. Kleeny was slacking.” With the slam of a button, Kleeny was mocking me with, “Okay, Shayla.”

“You wanna play that game, Nick?” I retorted, lowering my voice at his name with an unseen smile. No response, as usual. Gabe’s mic lit up, and he finally answered me. “Family stuff.” I shook my head at the response. Gabe was good at hiding his life outside the game. Keep your secrets then. I didn’t respond.

To say someone’s real name was pretty frowned upon in the game, but all who remained in the channel were my guild officers, all of whom had my number. Gabe, or Dante, was Kleeny’s real-life friend. He seemed to keep him out of trouble, which I liked him for. His downfall was that he wanted to flirt with anything that sounded like a female. Mortessa, or Ashley, Tiktu and I had talked about him before. Tiktu seemed particularly interested in him, something that Mortessa had found stupid. We spent a few hours trying to find him and Kleeny on Facebook one night. We thought we might have found Gabe, but not Kleeny. After that, I locked down my Facebook, so no one tried to find me in the same manner.

“Now, children,” Mortessa warned sarcastically.

Mortessa was interesting. She was barely thirty, older than everyone currently present. Mortessa talked little when there were more than just the five of us. She’d gotten me through a time when I had rumors going around the server about me being a twelve-year-old boy. She was great at that. “Hey Tes, how are ya?” Nax asked. Mortessa sighed. “Long day, worked for sixteen hours.”

Ouch. Tes was a nurse, and sometimes she worked extremely long days. I could barely imagine working for over seven, let alone sixteen. “That’s a long day. Do you get off tomorrow at least?” Another sigh. “Yeah, but I just got a schedule change. I’ll be working nights on Fridays, Effie.” She sounded pissed and exhausted. “That’s okay; real life comes first, yeah?” I was disappointed, but Mortessa couldn’t do anything about it. We all had things that came first before the game. School, work, families, etc. “yeah I guess.” She sounded a bit more miffed than I was about it.

“Guys! Guys! RPers in Goldenstars!” Kleeny said excitedly, followed by laughter. I rolled my eyes. “Kleeny, didn’t I just make you apologize to Demurati for trolling RP yesterday? If someone from Til Death sends me a whisper one more time about you, I’m leaving you in timeout.” I warned.

Timeout was a public humiliation for being stupid. There were no chat privileges; they could only read. Kleeny got to visit Timeout a lot, to the point I was pretty sure he thought it was funny to push my buttons. Til Death was close to the member cap, but we were still roughly three times their size, and their leader got butthurt by anyone mocking how their members played the game. We’d had many conversations, mostly when one of his members got trolled by one of mine. The number of late-night arguments that went on for hours between me and Demurati was something that usually had me going to bed angry.

“But Effie, they are ERPing in the middle of the city! Please!” he pleaded. I burst out laughing. ERP was fair game. It was erotic role-playing. “Okay, where are you? I wanna see.” I was already in Goldenstars, the capital city of the Chaos Elves. It was where I spent most of my time when we weren’t doing guild activities. When you’re fully geared and got a guild to run, sometimes sitting in a city is the more fun activity, plus I played the Auction House like a fiddle. At one point I only stuck to one market, but when I hit the gold cap and it seemed broken, saying I had over a hundred billion, I played every market I could–just because I could.

Something Demurati also had an issue with.

A box popped up on my screen, where Kleeny had invited me to a group. I accepted it and began walking to where he was. Figures. It was an inn. “Are they really just right there?” I asked, chuckling. “Yes, dude!” People who ERP just kinda looked funny. They’d be stripped to the undergarments every character had, and lying around or standing or dancing. It was quite funny to watch, honestly. We stood in the inn’s doorway, seeing if they were smart enough to take it into a private chat. Unfortunately, they were. “Effie, look at the innkeeper,” Kleeny said. The innkeeper NPC was not in her usual spot; she was walking up the stairs, something I’d never seen an innkeeper do. PiPspect has idiot-proofed them to make them easy to find.‌ When she reached the top, she stopped, facing the direction of the ERPers. Kleeny giggled. I watched, engrossed in the peculiarity. A chat bubble came up above the NPC’s head, and we could hear her speak. “At least someone’s having fun around here,” she sighed, and walked back down the stairs. We burst out laughing. “You guys, this NPC just walked up to these guys and called them out. Oh God, I wish I had recorded that. Is that an Easter egg? Is Darcy or one of the other GM’s on? Maybe they trolled them. That was amazing.” Kleeny rambled ‌between laughs.

I agreed it was amazing, but it was out of the ordinary. Granted, private servers could code NPCs to do things that wouldn’t happen in the “legit” version of the game, but I’d been warned to keep my guildies in line around role players by GMs, or Game Masters.

Hypocrites. I thought to myself. Though the speaking thing was strange. The game did not have a built-in mic or communication capabilities. Not yet, at least.

I walked over to the innkeeper to talk to her, pushing my key binding to take me out of the constant run action. I wanted to see if she had anything else hidden about her character, just as the two ERPers walked down the stairs.

Great. Members of Til Death.

“Ah crap, it’s these assholes,” I said out loud. “What strike are we on?” Nax asked. “I don’t know, Kleeny, please don’t say anything. I’m begging you.” He chuckled, “yeah okay, fine.”

If it isn’t Kindar’s biggest troublemakers. Effie, what strike is your merry band of bandits on? The Chaos Elf Assassin named Seardew asked. “She literally just asked me the same question you asked, Nax. Except in character.” I breathed out. Laughter ran through every mic in the channel. We’ve done nothing, Seardew. The innkeeper has disturbed you, not us. Check your chat log. I typed, half in character, half out. I was not a role player, so how would I know how to say, check your chat log, in character?

Both were quiet for a moment. An emote notice popped up on the screen, reading Seardew looks suspiciously at Effie. I rolled my eyes. Perhaps the innkeeper can verify this for you. I wrote. Kleeny giggled again. “I can’t.”

This time Mortessa chimed in. “You guys are really skirting the edge of what you can get away with, aren’t you?” Both Kleeny and I responded, “Yes, Mom.” The Orc named Retrusic was the one who began walking this time. Innkeeper, can you confirm this true? Are these scoundrels not to blame? Without missing a beat, the innkeeper’s chat box came up, and my jaw dropped. “Sal, I believe the bed upstairs needs tending; someone’s gone and made a mess again.” Dead silence. “How did they code that?” I asked, not believing my eyes and ears. Kleeny was dead silent this time. Okay, you win this time, Effie. I don’t know how you did it, but I applaud you. Seardew said, bowing, and ran out of the inn with Retrusic in tow.

“He thinks you did that? Ha! That was terrifying.” Kleeny said, both in amusement and also in fear. I walked up to the innkeeper and right-clicked her. The creator welcomes you, adventurer. What would you like to do? Is what the text said, followed by a few options to buy food or set as home. I thought for a moment. “Guys, what’s the saying for chaos elves when you talk to them normally? Isn’t it ‘Chosi so dina, Adorno’ or something? What’s the god they worship or whatever? Why the hell is this one telling me something about a creator?” I asked mostly to myself, but I kind of wanted feedback.

“Okay, I saw one of those useless space filler NPCs earlier talking about that too, but they were in Chasamare, so that doesn’t make sense. Pretty sure the God of the world is literally Kindar.” Gabe said.

Kindar was the name of the planet. Made sense.

“Huh. Must be some event or something. The timing of that response was spot on, though. It was—”

“Terrifying? Yeah. I’m done for the night. Between this and the king yesterday, my paranoia is through the roof.” Kleeny interrupted me. His character disappeared, and the voice channel dinged to let us know someone had left. Not even so much as a goodbye.

“What did she say? I’ve not seen him get that freaked out in a while,” Gabe asked. I read back what the NPC had said, and we decided that one of the GMs had to have been messing with us. “It just doesn’t make sense. Those NPCs don’t talk.” Mortessa said.

“They can hide that they’re online, you know.” Nax said, the comment referring to the Game Masters. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain the speaking thing. The innkeeper literally said it; we both heard it. How could one of the GMs code that?” I asked him, unsure if that was even possible.

“Don’t ask me, I’m just a meathead, remember?” Nax retorted. Mortessa snorted at that. I ignored him.

I stood at a mailbox in the game making gems for various pieces of armor to increase their stats before I logged out, something I gave my guild for free and would be needed for all the gear that dropped tonight. A dialogue box came up for an NPC walking by. I sighed, annoyed. I didn’t think I had clicked on them; in fact, I was confident I hadn’t.

“The creator welcomes you, adventurer.” Just like the innkeeper, I could hear them speaking. See the chat bubble. This NPC was one I’d never seen before. An assassin from the looks of it, and outside the row.

“Okay, now there’s an NPC who just said something similar to what the innkeeper did, what the hell?!” I asked it more to myself, but of course my mic lit up and Nax gave some snarky response I ignored, as my attention was drawn to the bar indicating progress in my crafting. It was finished, but my character continued the crafting movement, as if my character was chiseling the same gem for nearly twice as long as it should have gone on. “Is it..? Aw man... Did I DC again...?” I said, “Goddamnit, what is going on tonight with the servers?” Nax followed up.

We had disconnected twice during our raid tonight. Each time we’d lost a few players who ended up logging off for the night. The disconnection would mark the fifth time. As if my game heard and responded to me, my screen suddenly flashed to the login screen. The entire voice chat groaned.

Stupid private servers. I sighed. “Guys, I’m going to head to bed. Maybe they’ll get this all fixed tomorrow morning. It’ll be a lot easier to deal with it then.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a plan to me. Night, Effie!” I rolled my eyes, feeling heat on my face that I was grateful that no one could see. I had zero interest in Nax, yet my response to the simple friendly goodnight was literally blushing. Something that made talking to boys in real life nearly impossible.

“Night, everyone!” I said.

The voice chat filled with goodnights from the others, and I clicked the disconnect button.

I stretched and looked at the clock beside my bed. Three thirty-five. Another late night of games. I silently hoped my mom wouldn’t hear me creeping about; she’d be so mad. I decided we would definitely have a beach day tomorrow. If nothing more than to get her off my case. About more than just the game.

I placed the rock with the others in my collection and slipped into bed, falling asleep quickly.

—

My dreams that night were abnormally vivid. Like a psychedelic video you’d find on YouTube, colors swirled as I fell down an unending tunnel. I could feel the wind, feel the colors almost as it danced on my skin as if I were passing through some sort of veil.

down... down... down I fell.

The dream took a turn from enjoyable to terrifying when I began hearing screams all around me. I was not screaming, but I realized they were cries of other people that were falling too. I couldn’t see them. Like all dreams that you fall in, I saw the bottom with a gasp and immediately woke up with a start. My bed felt hard, cold. Rough. Had I somehow tumbled out of bed? I opened my eyes, head still resting on whatever surface I was lying on.

I sat up immediately, looking around. I was on the ground but not in my room. Not unless my wooden floor had become some sort of blue brick. My head was spinning. Was I still dreaming? Where was I?

“Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” a small voice behind me asked. I swung around to look at where it had come from. It was a boy, maybe ten, looking down at me. “I—I’m not sure,” I said back to him. The place looked vaguely familiar. But I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d only been looking at the ground; I began focusing on things around me.

My eyes widened.

“No. Nonono. Time to wake up.” I said while pinching myself. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Nothing changed. I looked at the boy as he seemed to process the surroundings at the same time. His face had gone completely white. I was sure mine matched his.

I was lying on a blue-tinted brick pavement. A path of it lined with gold weaved its way through the massive area of carefully laid sedimentary to my left. In front of me, a golden and tan wall stood with pillars inlaid every so often. To my right, an opening in the wall with high arches led to a smaller opening. The city of blue and tan bricks with golden accents was unmistakable to me. To anyone who spent most of their time in it while playing.

I was sitting in Goldenstars.