Read The Brink for Free Online

interface blows! she ping’d, her head thrashing in the busted polygons.
    Eventually, Aremi maneuvered free. She’d outfitted herself in classic moon elf, green skin with red eyes and flared ears. It was first choice on the pull down. Her hair fell in two braids down to her chest, disappearing into a maroon cowl. Pretty much everybody dumped the Mordor crap long ago for bespoke player designs like BabyMomma, DimeBag, Ice-Queen. I skinned in EmoPrince, mostly for the syncs.
    I pulled up her player profile. She’d sketched it—only diehards fleshed them out—but she said she was in grad school in Arizona, mostly “taking baths” and “avoiding my adviser.”
    /what’s your field? I ping’d.
    /how’d you know?
    /your profile, you wrote it
    /doh! psych.
    /here for research? on gamers?
    /on loneliness.
    /srsly? I ping’d. /I should leave you alone then.
    It was an n00b mistake to ask too many questions too fast. And I didn’t want to creep her. So I backed off, let her drive herself, and answered her pings when she asked. We lofted over the hedge maze that I had planted out the back of the manse. I’ve always had a thing for labyrinths, the original alt-worlds, and Rrango used to invite crowds over to lose themselves and sync in the bushes or whatever. It’d taken me a year to earn the Alsonax to buy the grid and build it. The bright-green walls sprang two stories tall, so once you were in, you were in. Along the paths flowed a series of connecting pools, bordered by statuary of all the creatures I’d pwned—from world bosses down to lair dogs. At the exit, where all the water sluiced to, lay my sea.
    /you designed all this? Aremi asked.
    /pathetic, eh?
    /no, impressive. i mean i had no idea . . .
    And for the first time in months, since I stopped working and Jocelyn looked at me as though I had another few mistakes in me, I added up. A stranger saying that I had not wasted my time. This is what the Also does: it feeds you people.
    /all this will be wiped soon , I ping’d. /you know the Also is ending right?
    /endings better than beginnings , she answered. /last song beautifuler than first.
    And I thought of Jocelyn with her novels, and how she always read the final sentence before starting them.
    / so who are you? she ping’d.
    /32 yr, 5ft11. 235lbs (losing ;) )
    /ew. don’t care. I meant: why help me?
    /like being a tour guide.
    /don’t you have friends? or no friends in the game, just players?
    I had this small, warming hope that she might become the one thing from the game I could take with me.
    /have friends. but new friends better than old friends. interestinger.
    /so not a word!
    /what about: don’t want to be alone when the lights go out.
    Aremi went aerial and dusted me. I chased her, and for the rest of the night we did this thing where I’d zoom her and she’d fling herself away. Everybody goes through it, the I-can-fly moment. It’s half the appeal of the Also, but eventually, she flung herself away and signed off. No good-bye. A minute later came a ping, slowed by traffic through the Core:
    /alone at the end? but we will be .
    I spent an hour idling in Origin Park before Aremi finally showed. She was quieter than normal, slow to ping, as though she had come only for my benefit.
    /RL aggro , she said, then: /correct usage?
    I needed to wow her.
    /there’s so much world left to see , I ping’d. /how about a tour?
    /show me!
    We tethered together and flew through my quest history, every place we could re-achieve—the Lair of the Kraken, the smoking Manhatta ruins, the dungeons of UnderAlso. But viewed on aerial, buried in the new snow, the sites looked small and unpersuasive. The Lair of the Kraken without a Kraken deboning players is a pretty much a cave with clip art. We’d achieve one vista, Aremi would ping, /next , and we’d go. I tried to impress upon her what had been undertaken. In an empty