“I don’t have time for an alternative.”

Beenie took hold of Park’s wrist and squeezed.

“Yeah. I know. Just let me get high really quick, and we’ll see what we can do.”

He let go of Park, ducked away from the larger man’s hand, and headed toward the bathrooms, one of the generation that believed in doing their drugs out of sight.

PARK WATCHED THE UNDULATED BLADE OF A FLAMBERGE pierce the side of the Northerner and rip upward, unzipping the huge barbarian’s rib cage in a spray of blood. He watched it again and again as the highlight replayed on the screens of the main gaming salon on the basement level below the thumping dance floor.

The bass reverberated from the ceiling, frequently lost in the screams, applause, and cheers from the crowd that had packed in to watch the gladiators.

A banner over the bar announced that this was a North American Video Gaming Federation Regional War Hole Tournament. The winner of the regional would face off against three other gladiators in a national championship, and the winner of that event would then be sent to the Global Champs in Dubai. Standing at the back of the long room Beenie explained it to Park, as the reptilian wielder of the flamberge flexed onscreen at the command of a prototypically slouching, rail-thin Asian gamer sitting in one of the two articulated black mesh chairs on a raised dais at the middle of the room.

There seemed little reason for having the gamers on the platform. All eyes were riveted on the main screen, a massive composite made of four fifty-two-inch Sony LCD displays, or on one of the dozens of smaller screens jutting from the walls and ceiling. For all practical purposes, the gamers could be at home, comfortably ensconced in the custom-pressed ass grooves of their sofa cushions. Or so Park thought until he saw the press of fans forming as the gamer rose, casually dropped his heavily customized controller on the chair, flipped up the collar of the shiny nylon logo-covered jacket draped over his shoulder like a cape, and descended the three steps into the mob, plucking from their hands the scraps of paper, War Hole T-shirts, NAGVF caps, glossy eight-by-tens, and assorted other mementos offered to be autographed.

Beenie was shaking his head.

“I never much got into the hack-n-slash scene myself, but that dude there, Comicaze Y, he just laid some wicked shit on that barbarian.”

Park rubbed his eyes. They felt grainy, almost pebbled, like they were sprouting sties. He couldn’t stop grinding his teeth; his jaw muscles had started to cramp. He knew it was the speed, but knowing the cause of the symptoms gave him no relief. He knew only one of two things would make him feel any better: sleep or more speed. He wanted to be home, held by Rose, the baby safe between them

He opened his mouth wide, stretching his jaw, snapped his teeth together.

“I don’t like games where people just kill each other.”

Beenie took a sip of his screwdriver.

“Like I said, it’s not my thing either, but I’ve played a couple rounds. It’s like golf. You may not like it, but you try it once or twice and you know how hard it is. After that, every time you see those guys on tour, all you can think is that they must be witches with the things they make the ball do. Comicaze Y, the other guys at the top, they’re like that. Voodoo with the controller.”

Park understood that there were people who tired of the endless puzzles and problem-solving scenarios of Chasm Tide, the social dynamics that needed to be mastered if a player was going to integrate into a raiding party or quest. Advancement in the game required long hours spent picking at tangles of logic and personality, as well as hacking and slashing. He himself had no particular interest in the game. If it wasn’t for Rose, he’d never have built a character of his own, let alone logged several hours adventuring and exploring the terrain. He lacked the ability to suspend disbelief to the extent required to make the experience immersive, but he admired the skill and workmanship that went into the building of the thing, the attention to detail. And he respected the values inherent in the system of levels that characters progressed through as they became more powerful. Certainly those levels could be bought with blood or gold, but the rewards for ingenuity and teamwork were far larger. Multiple levels could be jumped in a single bound if the right riddle was answered or puzzle assembled. He liked the idea of a world where mental acuity and the ability to play well with others were valued more highly than blood-lust or greed.

War Hole was a Chasm Tide spin-off for players who felt otherwise. Of whom there were many. War Hole rewarded their virtual brutality abundantly, but asked that something be risked. Whereas death in Chasm Tide led to an inconvenient reincarnation in the heart of the Chasm, gamers in War Hole could advance to the highest levels of proficiency only by permanently risking the lives of their warriors. Avatars killed in tournaments such as these did not emerge to fight again; they were lost. All record of them obliterated from the War Hole servers, locally stored copies locked from reloads.

Observing a squat, bald forty-year-old, silently sobbing as he drank the repeated shots of tequila poured for him by his sullen handlers, Park guessed that he was one of the erased. A defeated fighter who had seen the fruit of hundreds of hours of gaming cut down and dispersed into the unknown.

He ground his teeth.

“This is depressing.”

Beenie sipped his drink.

“What isn’t?”

An announcer’s voice came over the PA, informing the fans that there would be a thirty-minute break before the final match, thanking various sponsors, listing drink specials, and tipping his hat to the evening’s host.

“Cager!”

Several pin spots swarmed, raced around the room, convened on a bastion of banquettes and divans, settling on a reedy young man in black Levis that rode high at the cuffs to show a few inches of sagging mismatched red and blue socks, and a vintage sleeveless black Tubeway Army T-shirt. Hunched over the silverfish glow of a smartphone screen, he took a black comb from his back pocket and used it to recut the side part in his immovably greased towhead blond hair. He tucked the comb away, vaguely acknowledged the crowd with a flip of fingers, and returned attention to his phone, thumbs dancing over a slide-down qwerty keyboard.

A brief cheer rose from the crowd, the spots went back to swimming the walls, and everyone moved toward the bar or the bathrooms. The screens cross-faded, tournament highlights replaced by pictures and snippets of video, taken and messaged by camera phone and smart device, the work of this evening’s club patrons. Dance floor action, a couple shooting themselves having sex in a bathroom stall, a boy puking, several people doing assorted drugs, flashed anatomy, and a brawl in the valet line.

Park stared at the young man.

Child of great fortune, infamous wastrel and libertine, source of endless gossip-blog fodder. Suspected plague profiteer. He looked like nothing so much as any number of wallflower students Park had known at Stanford. Acolytes in fields of obscure digital study; he’d not socialized with them but recognized in their eyes the same desperate fever that had possessed the Ph.D. candidates in the philosophy department.

He finished the bottle of water he’d been sipping at, his tense stomach resisting, and set it on a cocktail table crowded with empty glasses stuffed with cigarette butts.

“I want to meet him.”

Beenie finished his drink, set the glass aside, rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, and bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Let’s go see the prince.”

The low tables and couches in the VIP section were littered with gadgets; minivideo recorders, gaming handhelds, ultraportable DVD players, a small stack of phones that someone appeared to have been using for an improvised game of Jenga, thumb drives, a fistful of memory cards, and all the attendant detritus of instillation disks, twist-tied USB cables, styro-foam and cardboard packing materials, rebate cards, and low-quality AA and AAA batteries.