Once I had my new controllers arranged properly, I synced my phone to the Bluetooth headphones built into my new Armada VR flight helmet. Then I cued up my Raid the Arcade playlist—my digital re-creation of an old analog mixtape I’d found among my father’s things with that title carefully printed on its label in my father’s handwriting. The title led me to assume it was a compilation of his favorite gaming music, and I’d grown up listening to those songs while I played videogames, too. As a result, listening to my father’s old digital combat compilation had become an essential part of my Armada gaming ritual. Trying to play without my Raid the Arcade playlist on in the background invariably threw off my aim and my rhythm. That’s why I made sure I had it cued up before the start of every mission.
I put on the faux Interceptor pilot helmet and adjusted its built-in noise-canceling headphones, which completely covered each of my ears. After I adjusted the VR goggles to make sure they fit snugly over my eyes, I thumbed the small button that extended the helmet’s retractable microphone—a completely pointless, yet undeniably cool feature. Then I retracted and extended the microphone a few more times, just to hear the sound it made.
Once the game finished loading, I spent a few minutes customizing the button configuration on my new throttle and flight-stick controllers, then logged on to the Armada multiplayer server.
I immediately checked the EDA pilot rankings, to make sure my ranking hadn’t slipped since my last login. But my so-cheesy-it-was-cool call sign was still there, in sixth place. I’d held that spot for over two months now, but a part of me was always still shocked to see it there, listed among the top ten, alongside the game’s most famous—and infamous—players. I scanned the familiar collection of call signs, listed in what had now become a familiar order:
01. RedJive
02. MaxJenius
03. Withnailed
04. Viper
05. Rostam
06. IronBeagle
07. Whoadie
08. CrazyJi
09. AtomicMom
10. Kushmaster5000
I had been seeing these ten call signs almost every night for years, but I didn’t actually know who any of those people really were—or where they lived, either. Aside from a few casual acquaintances at school and work, Cruz and Diehl were the only Armada pilots I’d ever met in real life.
The game had over nine million active players in dozens of countries, so clawing my way up into the top ten had been no easy feat. Even with what I’ve been told is a natural talent for videogames, it had still taken me over three years of daily practice before I even managed to crack the top one hundred. Once I’d crossed that threshold, I finally seemed to find my groove, and in the months that followed, I made a meteoric rise into the top ten while also rising up the ranks of the Earth Defense Alliance, earning one field promotion after another until I was promoted all the way up to lieutenant.
I knew Armada was only a videogame, but I’d never been one of the “best of the best” at anything before, and my accomplishment gave me a real sense of pride.
Admittedly, all the time I’d had to devote to the game had shaved a full point off my grade average, and it had probably cost me my relationship with Ellen, too. But I’d already vowed to turn over a new leaf, I reminded myself. After tonight’s mission, no more Armada for at least two full weeks—even if that meant sacrificing my position in the top ten. No great loss, I told myself. The higher you were ranked, the more trash talk, friendly fire, and accusations of cheating you had to endure from the other players.
Case in point—the Armada pilots currently ranked in the top five were easily the most loathed players in the game’s brief history. This was partly because the top five ranked pilots had the honor of “painting” their drones with their own customized multicolored designs, while the rest of us flew plain old stainless steel ones. That was how the top five had earned their nickname “The Flying Circus.”
A lot of posters in the Chaos Terrain forums seemed to believe the top five pilots were just too good to be real players, and that they had to be NPC bots or Chaos Terrain employees. Others theorized they were an elitist gamer clan, because the five of them never responded to messages or in-game chat requests. Of course, that may have been because N00bs were always accusing them of cheating, by using some sort of client hack to auto-aim or give their shields infinite energy. But it was all bullshit sour grapes. I’d been going head-to-head with RedJive (aka “The Red Baron”) and the other members of the Flying Circus on the free-for-all death-match servers for over a year now, and I’d never once seen any sign they were cheating. They were just better than everyone else. In fact, studying their moves and learning from them was how I’d climbed into the top ten. I still found their general arrogance obnoxious, though—especially RedJive, who had an infuriating habit of sending the same text message every time he shot someone else down in the game’s player-versus-player practice mode: You’re welcome.
Those two words would flash on your screen, accompanied by a blood-boiling BEEP! RedJive obviously had a macro set up to fire that message like a missile, right after he blasted your ship to bits—literally adding insult to injury. I knew why he (or she) did it, too. It was a tactical move designed to anger his opponents and throw them even further off balance right before they respawned in another ship. And it worked, too. On everyone. Including me. But one of these days, when I finally got RedJive between my crosshairs, it would be my turn to send one of those infuriating texts: No, no, no, RedJive. You’re welcome.
Of course, now I constantly got accused of hacking all the time, too. To quote my wizened boss, Ray Wierzbowski: “That’s how you know you’ve mastered a videogame—when a bunch of butt-hurt crybabies start to accuse you of cheating in an effort to cope with the beatdown they’ve just suffered at your hands.”
When I pulled up my friends list, I saw that Cruz and Diehl were both already logged in, their player rankings listed beside their call signs. Cruz (whose call sign was “Kvothe”) was currently in 6791st place, and Diehl (aka “Dealio”) was ranked 7445th. Their Terra Firma player rankings were much higher, but they were both still a long way from making it into the Thirty Dozen like Ray.
I switched on my helmet microphone and joined Kvothe and Dealio on their private voice-chat line.
“You still won’t admit you’re wrong?” Cruz was shouting as I logged in.
“I told you, your Wonder Woman argument proves nothing!” Diehl said. “Yes, Princess Diana of Themyscira did once wield Mjolnir in some obscure bullshit crossover issue! That only proves my point, Cruz! Do you think Wonder Woman would ever be caught dead wielding Sting?”
“No, but she’s a superhero, and they don’t use swords, do they?” Cruz said—clearly without thinking his statement through.
“Superheroes don’t use swords?” Diehl said gleefully. “What about Nightcrawler? Deadpool? Electra, Shatterstar, Green Arrow, Hawkeye—oh, and then there’s Blade and Katana! Two superheroes who are actually named after swords! Oh, and Wolverine had that idiotic Muramasa Blade made with part of his soul. Which, while incredibly lame, was still a far cooler magical weapon than Sting!”
“Sorry to interrupt, ladies,” I said. “I think you should just agree to disagree.”
“Iron Seagull!” Cruz called out. “I didn’t see you log in!”
“You’re late, fool,” Diehl said. “And Cruz won’t shut up about Wonder Woman!”
“I’m right on time,” I said. “The briefing doesn’t start for another thirty seconds.”
“What the hell happened with you and Herr Knotcher today?” Diehl asked. He said it with a thick German accent.
“Nothing happened,” I said. “Because I split before anything did.”
“Well, he was making threats toward you to his idiot friends after the bell rang,” he said. “Vengeance in his eyes and all that. Plan accordingly.”
I cleared my throat. “Time is short. Let’s talk mission, guys.”
“If this is another Disrupter takedown, I’m out, y’all,” Cruz said. “I’ll bail and play Terra Firma instead. I’m serious, guys.”
“What’s the matter, Kvothe?” I asked. “Don’t you enjoy a challenge?”
“I enjoy balanced gameplay,” Cruz replied. “I’m not a masochist like you.”
I felt a brief impulse to defend the game, but it was hard to argue the point. The Disrupter was a powerful new weapon the Sobrukai had unveiled after one of the game’s most recent content updates. It was capable of disrupting the quantum communication link to all of Earth’s defensive drones, rendering them useless. For the past few months, all of the game’s most devoted players—myself included—had been trying to figure out how to disable a Disrupter’s defenses and destroy the damn thing. But so far the Sobrukai’s new super weapon had proven to be indestructible, and that made many of the game’s higher-level missions more or less unwinnable.
Despite the endless barrage of complaints claiming that Chaos Terrain had broken and/or ruined their own game, the company refused to remove the Disrupter from the enemy’s arsenal or make it easier to destroy. As a result, a lot of Armada players were defecting to play Terra Firma. The Disrupter never showed up in any TF mission—maybe because by the time one made landfall, there was nothing the EDA’s ground troops could do to stop it.