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out. "I don't even know your name and you violated my projection."
    "Michael," he said, still focused on the patrons in the bar.
    Gabby's hands were icy and her knees shook back in her room. "You didn't even have the talents to get in here. Gawd," she said. "I should so send you out of here with a major DoT on your ass."
    That seemed to get his attention and he scrunched up his face. "What? I would debuff you so fast and...." Michael stopped, shook his head, and continued. "I'm sorry I kissed you like that. It was the only thing I could think of when the Coder looked this way."
    Gabby had never heard the term Coder before, though she could guess. "Coder? What the hell is a Coder? You sure it wasn't just a hacker?"
    "Not a hacker," he said.
    He paused and she gave him her best get-on-with-it look.
    "They're the ones that code your reality."
    "They made LifeGame?" she asked.
    Michael glanced around the room and grabbed her hand. When she flinched away, he shrugged and took a seat in a nearby booth. Gabby followed, but not before really taking in the Black Gate for the first time.
    The gloom at first seemed like one of those lame smoky bars she got stuck in playing historical games, but then she realized far off to her left floated a strange blue-green marble. The marble, she quickly realized, was Earth. Their projections were now walking through an augmented bar covered in a see-through dome.
    Circling around the bar at a considerable distance was the rough profile of a rocky gray ridgeline. The Black Gate resided in the center of a huge crater on the moon.
    The view was so fantastic that she completely forgot about Michael, the Coder, and why she'd come in the first place.
    "Yeah," said Michael, startling her. "I could totally camp this place since they took over a set of moon base sensors."
    "It's so Mario," she whispered, still awed by the surroundings.
    Michael cleared his throat and when Gabby turned, she found herself staring directly into his eyes. She wasn't sure about Michael the person, but she could totally camp his eyes.
    "Look." Michael seemed uncomfortable under her gaze, so she stopped trying to memorize what his eyes looked like. "I came here to find you and I think so did that Coder."
    "You still haven't explained what a Coder is."
    Michael huffed and ran his hand through his messy black hair. "I so have. They code your reality. Don't you get that?"
    "Actually, no. It's like you're trying to describe a word using the same word," she said.
    Michael grew annoyed and wrinkled up his face at her, and she realized then that he wasn't much older than she was.
    "It's not like LifeGame," he explained. "Except it is. They do code that stuff, but they also code everything else. The trees. The lawn. Everything you see."
    It was Gabby's turn to be annoyed. "You mean he works for the companies that make personal reality products? Why would one of those guys be looking for me?"
    Michael hit the table and the patrons at a nearby table gave them an annoyed look. Michael lowered his voice. "No. Not that stuff, but everything else. They make everything you see into a lie."
    "Do they have anything to do with the LGIE?" she asked.
    His face brightened up. "Yes. The LIE are Coders, too."
    "You mean LGIE," she said, putting extra emphasis on the G.
    "Why would you add the G? LifeGame is one word. They're a lie," he said.
    Gabby shook her head. "None of this is making sense. You're not explaining anything. Can you at least explain why you're looking for me?"
    Michael suddenly crouched down, and Gabby followed his lead. He glanced to their right, using only his eyes. Through the crowd in the center of the bar, Gabby saw a man with a long white ponytail, pale skin, and a dark, hungry sword strapped to his back. At second glance, she realized he was not much older than University years.
    "The Coder?" she whispered.
    "Yeah."
    "Total retro-fantasy fetish," said Michael.
    The pale Coder wandered back around the other way.
    "I need to get