This Is Not a Game Read Free

lithe, graceful, compact body in a maroon silk sari that exposed her cheerleader abdomen.
    She was perfect. Dagmar felt like a shaggy-haired Neanderthal by comparison. She couldn’t imagine why Siyed was cheating on his wife.
    Except for the obvious reason, of course, which was that he was a lying bastard.
    “Serves me right,” Dagmar said, “for getting involved with an actor.”
    The actor who had played the male ingenue in Curse of the Golden Nagi, in fact. Who was charming and good-looking and spoke with a cheeky East London accent, and who wore lifts in his shoes because he was, in fact, quite tiny.
    Leaving for another country had seemed the obvious solution.
    “Anyway,” she said, “maybe I’ll find some cute Aussie guy in Bali.”
    “Good luck with that.”
    “You sound skeptical.”
    An indistinct anxiety entered Charlie’s tone. “I don’t know how much luck anybody can have in Indonesia. You know the currency collapsed today, right?”
    “Yeah. But I’ve got credit cards, some dollars, and a ticket out of town.”
    Charlie gave it a moment’s thought.
    “You’ll probably be all right,” he said. “But if there’s any trouble, I want you to contact me.”
    “I will,” Dagmar said.
    Dagmar had the feeling that most employees of multimillionaire bosses—even youthful ones—did not quite have the easy relationship that she shared with Charlie. But she’d known him since before he was a multimillionaire, since he was a sophomore in college. She’d seen him hunched over a console in computer lab, squinting into Advanced D&D manuals, and loping around the Caltech campus in a faded Hawaiian shirt, stained Dockers, and flip-flops.
    It was difficult to conjure, in retrospect, the deference that Charlie’s millions demanded. Nor, to his credit, did Charlie demand it.
    “If it’s any consolation,” Charlie said, “I’ve been looking online, and Golden Nagi looks like a huge hit.”
    Dagmar relaxed against her pillows and sipped her drink.
    “It was The Maltese Falcon, ” she said, “with a bit of The Sign of Four thrown in.”
    “The players didn’t know that, though.”
    “No. They didn’t.”
    Being able to take credit for the recycled plots of great writers was one of her job’s benefits. Over the past few years she’d adapted Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, The Comedy of Errors (with clones), The Libation Bearers, The Master and Margarita (with aliens), King Solomon’s Mines, and It’s a Wonderful Life (with zombies).
    She proudly considered that having the zombies called into being by the Lionel Barrymore character was a perfect example of a metaphor being literalized.
    “When you revealed that the Rani was in fact the Nagi,” Charlie said, “the players collectively pissed their pants.”
    “I’d rather they creamed their jeans.”
    “That, too. Anyway,” Charlie said, “I’ve got your next job set up for when you get back.”
    “I don’t want to think about it.”
    “I want you thinking about it,” said Charlie. “When you’re on the beach in Bali looking some Aussie guy in the glutes, I want you distracted by exciting new plots buzzing through your brain.”
    “Oh yeah, Charlie,” sipping, “I’m going to have all sorts of plots going through my mind, you bet.”
    “Have you ever heard of Planet Nine ?”
    “Nope.”
    “A massively multiplayer online role-playing game that burned through their funding in the development stage. They were just about to do the beta release when their bank foreclosed on them and found that all they’d repossessed was a lease on an office and a bunch of software they didn’t have a clue about.”
    Dagmar was surprised. “They were getting their start-up funding from a bank? Not a venture capital outfit?”
    “A bank very interested in exploiting the new rules allowing them to invest in such things.”
    “Serves them right,” Dagmar judged.
    “Them and the bank.” Cheerfully. “So I heard from Austin they were