The G4M3 began in the exact same location that it had begun last time. I found myself in the blackened, crumbling streets of Saltpit City. On my right was the familiar building with the metallic panels welded to its dilapidated walls… the Eagles’ base. With only a moment’s hesitation, I headed off toward it. I paid no heed to the few people wandering the streets, and they ignored me as well. When I got to the door of my destination, I paused. I had to alert them to my presence. A stranger suddenly barging in with no warning would probably be greeted with gunfire. So, with little idea what to do, I knocked on the simple wooden door. The men on the street turned to look at me. I shot them a glance. They turned away immediately.

            “Who goes there?” came a surly voice from inside the building.

            “It’s me… Kyle Roswell,” I said for lack of anything better.

            “Kyle Roswell? For some reason, Sofia said to let you in if you came back. Stand up to the door.”

            A slot opened up near the top of the door and two eyes peered out. Then the door swung wide open. There was a gun pointed straight at me. The man wielding it waved me in with the barrel. I slowly walked in, and the guard slammed the door shut behind me.

            “Sofia!” the guard called out. “Kyle’s back!”

            There was a moment of silence, and then I heard the rumble of several sets of feet coming from the floor above. Sofia herself soon appeared atop the staircase. She leaped over the railing and landed softly on the wooden floor. Her face showed surprise and concern as she approached, but these emotions were quickly replaced by derision.

            When she spoke, it was as if she was scolding a child. “Kyle, what happened to you? Where’d you go? Where’ve you been?”

            “I…” the lie I concocted was not very convincing, “I was captured.”

            “What?” Sofia asked incredulously. “How?”

            “While we were asleep,” I said quickly, “some of the enemy soldiers must have gotten in and dragged me off. I’m not sure what happened. I just woke up in an enemy base.”

            One of the Eagles laughed. “You mean they busted into a dark room, found the leader of the Saltpit City Eagles and a total rookie asleep at a table, and they took you captive instead of Sofia?”

            “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” she said in a authoritative tone. “Follow me upstairs.”

I glared at the soldier who had made the remark about my story, but he ignored me and said to Sofia, “I’ll be going out for a while. Permission to leave, Commander?”

            “See ya around, Webb,” Sofia said dismissively as she ascended the creaking wooden staircase.

            The building that the Eagles were using as a base was definitely not originally built for such a purpose. It was made entirely of wood, which was not in good condition. The Eagles had reinforced it with metal in several places. The staircase was on one side of the room, and there was no elevator. Perhaps, I thought, this rather large building had actually once been someone’s house. Sofia led me up the creaking stairs into a small room with rather luxurious furnishings, at least for the world of G4M3. There were cushioned red sofas on either side of a long wooden table. The walls were relatively clean, and electric lights illuminated the room. There were no windows, however, only slits in the walls to fire guns from. Sofia threw herself down on one of the sofas and adopted a reclined position. I sat down in the opposite chair and looked across the low table at her. She put her feet up on it and reached under it with one arm. Drawing out two cups and a large bottle, she set them down on the table and began pouring.

            “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re the only member of the Eagles that’s ever been captured by the USOW and lived to tell the tale. Here, have a glass. I don’t have the slightest clue what this stuff is, since the label was gone when we first got it… but we’ve been drinking it for weeks now, and it tastes all right.”

            I took a sip of the clear fluid and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor, though it left a strange aftertaste. I had never drank any such substance before, so I had no idea what it was. I know now that it was an alcoholic beverage, though I still have no clue of what kind. These were illegal in Utopia, so I actually had no idea what they were.

            “So how did the battle go?” I asked. “How did everything turn out?”

            “It was pretty much over when I got out of the room,” she answered. “We raided the place for supplies, dragged out our wounded, and blew the base to Hell.”

            “So everything went perfectly?” I asked. “Why are you still inhabiting this base? I thought we were going to move to some kind of cave.”

            “I thought we might as well keep a footing in Saltpit City,” she answered, taking a swallow of her drink. “But it’s a good thing we did stay here, since you wouldn’t have known the way to the cave…”

            I was reluctant to ask the question that was foremost in my mind. “One thing I don’t understand, Sofia… Why, if you’re… I mean, the people of this city seem to be intelligent. So why do you keep fighting? What are you fighting about?”

            She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “What do you mean? Of course we’re intelligent!”

            “But… How long have you been fighting?”

“Who knows?” Sofia said, shrugging. “More than a hundred years. Maybe a thousand.”

I stared at her in amazement. “One thousand… But why? Why the endless war? What are you fighting about?”

            “The world…” she said. “We fight for different reasons… But you should know this! You live here… don’t you?”

            “But what started it all?” I asked.

            “Nuclear warfare,” she answered immediately.

            “Over what?”

            “I…” her voice trailed off. She looked far away for a moment. I suddenly remembered that she was an AI. Perhaps I had just posed an unanswerable question to her. Perhaps I had locked up her programming.

            I blinked, realizing the truth. “You don’t even remember… You’ve been fighting for so long that you’ve forgotten why it all started in the first place. You just keep butchering each other for the same piece of rock, again and again. You’ve never known anything else… There’s never been anything else…”

            “We fight for the world, Kyle!” she said with a wavering determination, standing up. “We fight for the same reasons people have always fought! The world is more than just a piece of rock; it’s people! The USOW was trying to forge a world empire, just like most of the other factions that have risen to power. But the Eagles… We fight for freedom!”

            After a pause, I said, “But think how much more peaceful life would be if you just stopped all the fighting…”

            “I ask you which is better… to die in battle and slip into the unknown, or to die a different death, and live a life without freedom?” Sofia retorted.

            I waved my hand at the scenery visible through the tiny cracks in the wall. “What about the dead, the wounded, the dying, the sick, the homeless, and the orphans? Do armies ever ask them if they want their world destroyed for the cause of freedom? No, they are destroyed in the crossfire between two sides that both firmly believe that what they are fighting for is right…”

            Sofia shook her head and looked at me incredulously. “Peace is what we fight for, Kyle, don’t you see?”

            “You can’t fight for peace; fighting is the opposite of peace!” I retorted, feeling adamant by this point. “War only begets more war. The only way to stop all the fighting is if someone actually stops fighting!”

            “So you propose we give up, and let the USOW control us all?” Sofia yelled back. “Yes, they would bring about peace, but in order to have their kind of peace, the world must be put under such a strict and solid government that the people will be restricted in nearly every way. They will be stifled so that they can hardly breathe, so that they must live according to a precise set of laws to avoid conflict! You would lead a machine’s life, without free will. And then what is the point of even living?”

            I paused in mid-thought, my mouth open… Sofia had just reiterated my own thoughts and misgivings about life in Utopia. I had been toying with her to see what kind of response I would get, and now I wondered if my grandfather had programmed into the people of G4M3 a hatred of the Order… At the same time, I seemed to have encountered another side to Sofia’s personality, or programming, as it were. She was thinking philosophically, and speaking like an educated Utopian would, instead of using all those strange expressions I had heard her use when speaking to her soldiers. I was at a loss for words, so I just shut my mouth and shook my head. After a moment, she gave a little laugh and smiled at me.

“But enough about that,” she said. “I know how you feel, Kyle. We all feel like that once in a while. But we’re soldiers, not philosophers. So… Now, tell me about your own experiences. Why would the USOW want to take you captive and leave me behind?”

            I swallowed hard. “Well… Like I said, I don’t remember anything but waking up in an enemy base.”

            “Did they interrogate you?”

            “They might have,” I said. “That is, if I hadn’t escaped so soon, you know.”

            She laughed. “No, I don’t know, Kyle. Tell me about it.”

            “Well, the base was very… clean,” I said, looking around the room, thinking fast.

            “Cleaner than this roach-hole?” she prompted.

            I nodded. “Yes, I suppose it was. Anyway, they… fed me in my cell. It was… good food, so I had a mind to stay for a while just to eat it.”

            “I know how you feel, in a way,” she said with a laugh, refilling our glasses.

            I took another swallow from my glass. I was stalling for time while I tried to make up a believable story about my escape. “The guard was… kind of stupid. I…”

            Luckily for me, in a way at least, my tale spinning was interrupted by a cry from downstairs. “Sofia! Enemy forces are headed this way! USOW tanks are headed down the street toward us!”

            Before the soldier was half done, Sofia was up and loading her rifle. “Get ready, Kyle. Everyone assume defensive positions! Get to your post and fortify the base! Cover all sides! Call in everyone to help!”

            After issuing her orders, Sofia ran to one of the slits in the wall and peered through. I followed her example. Sure enough, there was a huge armored vehicle riding along the road. Its turret creaked and clanked as it rotated toward the building we were in. The gun rose into the air until it was pointed almost at my face.

In the schools of Utopia, they had taught a class about the horrors of war and how they had been finally eradicated thanks to the wisdom and kindness of the Order. In that class, I had learned of several foolish battles in which many hundreds of men had died pointlessly. Those images are what allowed me to identify the vehicle I now saw as an armored battle tank, a machine of war. Running alongside the tank was a squad of infantrymen like the ones we had been fighting in the USOW base, though these were wearing desert camouflage, instead of blue and black uniforms, under their armor. They came marching out of the gloomy haze down the street and turned their helmeted faces toward us. Their visors glinted and I saw the red targeting lights on their guns as they aimed at the building. Sofia slid around to put her back against the wall as they opened fire.

            “They’re retaliating after our strike on their base,” Sofia said. “We’ll show ‘em how to defend properly!”

            With that, she rushed out of the room. I barely had time to follow. She issued orders to her soldiers as we ran down the stairs. They were already firing through the slits in the windows at the enemy soldiers. Several were readying anti-tank missiles and preparing to make their way to the third floor, where the biggest windows were. The sounds of gunfire made by various different kinds of weapons assaulted my ears. Then there was a deafening blast, a loud, whistling whirr, and I heard the walls on one of the floors above cave in.

            “The tank’s firing at us!” a soldier cried.

            “They’re coming in!” came another shout.

            Sofia fired at the door before it even swung open. Then it did swing wide, and a dead USOW soldier fell through the opening. Another came running behind him, but before he could make it inside, the metallic panel, the one they had slammed shut behind me the last time I had entered the Eagles’ base, closed in the USOW soldier’s face. Wanting to take part in the fight, I ran to the nearest slit window and poked my gun barrel through. When I looked outside, I saw several soldiers flying up into the air, up toward the opening that had been blown in the wall above. Fires were spurting out of their backs and lifting them up to the sky. I had never seen anything like it, but I fired at one anyway. The man screamed and lost control of his jetpack. He slammed into the wall of the building and tumbled to the ground.

            “They’re coming in through the hole they blasted in the third floor!” came a shout from upstairs, followed by bouts of gunfire.

            Sofia ran off with a squad of soldiers, heading back up the staircase. The lead man was peppered with bullets and fell back on his followers, creating a domino effect until the third man threw his falling allies out of his way and began firing. Then the enemy came in full force. They cut down most of the men on the stairs and Sofia ordered the rest to retreat. The USOW obviously had us outnumbered.

            “Get out of the building!” she commanded. “Take the back exit!”

            The soldiers began streaming out of the room through a door in the back that I had not even noticed. Sofia went with them. I was left in the room with just a few defenders. I was about to follow Sofia and the others when I heard one of the enemy soldiers shout my name. Without thinking, I stopped to look.

            The man on the stairs was pointing at me, his helmet gone. It was one of the Eagles, the one that had told Sofia that he was leaving for a while when I had entered the base earlier, the one she had called Webb. I scowled at him and leveled my rifle. He ducked behind cover just in time, but I managed to take out his comrade. I stared stupidly and watched the man clutch at the wound I had made in his throat, which was spraying blood. I listened in horror as he let out a gurgling scream and fell back against the wall. Why did I always have to hit them in the neck? I thought this as I remembered the first man I had killed. This delay cost me my escape. They were upon me then, in the blink of an eye. I scrambled for the exit, but tripped and fell. I felt something heavy hit the back of my skull. There was a second of intense pain, and I felt my weapon torn from my grasp. A boot was placed on my back. My hands were grabbed and bound.

            “Doctor Matthew Noble wants to have a chat with you, kid,” said the soldier who was tying me up. “You’re the lucky one.”

            “What?” I blurted, turning my head to get my face off the ground. “Why?”

            “Hell if I know!” retorted the soldier, heaving me up onto my feet. “He said that he wanted to know more about you and where you’re from. But if you want to argue about it, I’m warning you… it won’t take much to convince me to just shoot you.”

            I was about to respond to this comment when the door through which the others had escaped burst open once again. Several of the Eagles entered the room and began firing. Sofia was there, leading them. They moved slowly and professionally through the room, walking in formation and firing at all of the hostiles. Sofia raised her rifle to shoot the man holding me, but he heaved me up off the floor and used me as a human shield. I quickly wrapped my foot around behind his and gave it a jerk. We both toppled backwards onto the floor. The soldier landed on his back and I landed on top of him, which knocked the wind out of him completely. Then I rolled out of the way and saw Sofia fire a round of ammunition into the guard’s prone form. But the room was rapidly filling with enemies, and my hands were bound. I could not get up, and I knew Sofia could not pause to help me. The base would soon be overrun.

            “Go!” I yelled. “Get out of here! Save yourself!”
            Sofia saw the wisdom in my advice as a grenade landed in the middle of the room, spewing smoke. She ordered the Eagles to get out, and they obeyed quickly, heading out the back door. I scrambled to my feet, my vision blurry as the room filled with the grey-white gas, and slammed my shoulder against the wooden planking nailed over the window. The boards splintered and broke, and I fell on my back in the street. I saw the red and black clouds swirling above me like a smoky, hellish abyss. As soon as I was outside, I felt a pair of men grab me by the shoulders and heave me up onto my feet. Seeing quickly that they were USOW agents, I struggled in vain to escape.

            “Put him in here! We’re leaving!” I heard someone shout.

            I felt myself lifted bodily off the ground and hurled into a small square space. My back hit the metal walls hard, knocking the wind out of me. Looking around, I realized that I had been tossed into the trunk of a vehicle, perhaps a storage compartment on the USOW tank. The soldiers that had tossed me grabbed the lid of the compartment to shut it.

            “Wait!” I cried.

            There was a loud thump, cutting off my cry, and then the world went black. For a second, all I could hear was my own breathing, but this was soon replaced by the deafening roaring and clanking of the tank as it began to move. I felt the floor beneath me vibrate. I had been captured. They were taking me to their base. I had lied earlier about being captured, but now that I was actually faced with the prospect, it seemed much more daunting. Hadn’t Sofia said that no one had ever escaped from a USOW prison before? I began to imagine the tortures they would inflict upon me before I was allowed to “die” and return to Utopia, but then a thought struck me. The trunk they had placed me in was perfectly dark. I sat for a minute, feeling the cold metal wall with my arms, wondering if I should really leave again. Perhaps, I thought, I should remain playing until I discovered what this “Doctor Matthew Noble” wanted with me. But eventually I began to get nervous and to feel a little claustrophobic. I managed to get my hands free, and, reaching up under my shirt, I pressed the tiny button in my navel. I felt wind blowing around me again as the simulation deactivated…

==========================================================

            I could not tell how much time had passed between the moment I pressed the button to end the simulation, with the tank’s engine roaring and clattering in my ears, and the moment I awoke in the empty white room of the G4M3 facility, with only the lights above my head buzzing almost imperceptibly. As usual, the android worker had changed me into my normal civilian clothing, and I awoke lying on the bed. The change of setting was so sudden that I just lay there for a while, trying to convince myself of where I was. When I began looking around the room, I noticed Frank Billings standing beside my bed. He looked even older than ever. It looked like he was letting his hair turn grey.

            “Frank?” I said.

            “Rough game?” he asked, his smile appearing again. “You didn’t stay in there long, I’m told.”

            “I… was captured by the enemy,” I said, sitting up.

            He looked at me quizzically. “Captured? Not killed? So you just pressed the button to escape?”

            “Yes…” I answered slowly. “Does that mean I’m not allowed to go back to that world?”

            Frank smiled and shook his head. “No, no. Not at all. I’m just surprised that any of the factions would want to take you alive.”

            “The soldiers said they were taking me in for questioning.”

            Frank nodded. “I see. Knew something they wanted, did you? Hah! Looks like you’re making yourself important in this little world of yours!”

            “No…” I said slowly, recalling what the USOW soldier had said. “They didn’t want to know about the Eagles’ base. They wanted to know about me and… where I was from… I think.”

            Frank looked vaguely concerned, which surprised me a little. “Really? Well now… Who wanted to know this again?”

            “The USOW, the United States of the World, or something like that… and a man, a character in G4M3 named Matthew Noble.”

            Frank’s eyes went a little wider for a split second, and his mouth parted. Then he blinked away the expression and looked into my eyes. It felt like he was scrutinizing me. I stood up and stared right back at him. Then suddenly his smile appeared once again.

            “Matthew Noble!” he exclaimed, giving a short laugh. “My, you have gotten important indeed! You’re about to face your first boss!”

            “Boss?” I asked, scratching my neck. I didn’t feel quite right.

            “Bosses are the main enemies in G4M3,” Frank explained. “Every Player who gets good enough at the game to survive for a while in one world will eventually face a boss.”

            “But I’ve hardly done anything…”

            “You’ve survived two battles, Kyle!” Frank laughed. “But Doctor Noble is just your first boss. You’ll probably face more, if you live in this world long enough.”

            I blinked. This explanation sounded much too artificial. It made the world I had grown to love as much as fear sound too much like a game. I had come to think of it as home away from home, to care about the other characters in G4M3, and here was Frank Billings speaking as if it were all just a joke. He spoke as if there was a hidden order behind even the chaos in G4M3. It seemed so impossible… I had to force myself to remember that, in reality, G4M3 was still just a game. Frank knew what he was talking about.

            “Is there a… final boss?” I asked. “In other words, can you… beat… or win G4M3?”

            Frank paused before responding. “In a way, I suppose… It… But G4M3 is open-ended, meaning you can still play after you win. But the likelihood of you actually beating G4M3…”

            “No one has ever done it before?” I asked.

            Frank shook his head. “They say it’s impossible.”

            “So do I have to… take out Matthew Noble to continue?”

            “Yes,” Frank said gravely. “You have to kill him.”

            My eyes narrowed. “Then I will.”

            I expected Frank to smile or laugh, but he only nodded. “We’ll see… But not today. For now, you should go home and rest. I never allow more than one session a day, Kyle.”

            “Alright, Frank,” I said, shaking his hand. “This is quite a place, Frank. I don’t know what I would do without G4M3 now.”

            Frank sighed. “Neither do I.”

            Again, I had expected him to be amused, so I asked, “Frank… is something wrong?”

            He shook his head and stepped out of the room. “Nothing, Kyle. Nothing’s wrong.”

            I stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder. “Frank, is it something about the Order? Last time I wanted to play G4M3, you said something about the Order wanting to stop you. Are they trying to shut down G4M3?”

            When he looked at me then, Frank’s face showed more grave seriousness than I had ever seen before. “Kyle, I don’t think it’s wise to talk about the Order. They… could be listening.”

            “They always are, aren’t they?”

            Frank looked up and down the hallway. “Not here.”

            “What? Do you mean there are no monitoring devices in the G4M3 facility?”

            “I know too much about the Order, Kyle. I know more than anyone was meant to know. I used to work for them, and no one who works for them is ever intended to not work for them. I’ve been to the poor sections, the ones no one’s allowed to see… I’ve watched as the Order put its accursed implants into every innocent newborn child, to keep track of them… to change them from humans into robots… just like all the rest of them…”

            “You’re talking crazy talk,” I said, a strange feeling rising in my stomach.

            “It’s getting dark, Kyle,” Frank said loudly, as if he had not meant to say what he had just told me. “You should go.”

            “I want to know more about the Order…” I said.

            “No,” he replied. “You don’t. The more you know about the Order, the less happy you will be. The Order doesn’t want you to know about it. As Otto von Bismarck once said: ‘Laws are like sausages; it’s better if you don’t see how they’re made.’”

            “Sausages?”

            “All the food you eat,” he replied. “It’s all the same. And believe me, you would not want to know what it’s made of.”

            “No…” I said, shaking my head. “What do you mean, Frank?”

            “Go, Kyle!” he burst out almost angrily. “Get out of here! You can come back later if you want to play G4M3 some more. For now… just go. Leave me alone for a while… No, I’m never alone. Like the Order tells us, we are never alone.”

            Without another word, I walked off down the hall. I pressed the button to call the elevator up, but, before I stepped inside, I turned back around toward Frank.

            “Frank…” I said. “What, exactly, is the Order?”

            Frank turned to look at me from across the hall. His stare was blank and zombie-like. He looked old, I thought, older than ever before. I had seen that look once before… when I was getting off the tram before my first session of G4M3. I had even seen that look, also, in my grandfather’s eyes, I thought. It was like a great weight was on their shoulders, as if they were carrying a burden of knowledge so that the rest of us would remain happily ignorant… and they resented us for it.

            “No one knows,” he said. “Not anymore.”

            Before I could say more, the elevator doors shut in my face, and I felt myself drop down. I hadn’t even realized I had backed into the lift. In a way, I was glad I had done so. I left the G4M3 facility in a daze, and not for the first time. It seemed that was always how I felt after a session of G4M3. I wondered if all the other thousands of Players felt this way. Or was I unique, perhaps because I knew Frank Billings so closely? Was I unique at all? Frank had said that I was important now in the world of G4M3… It was a sad fate, and highly ironic, that I was important there… while here in the real world, I was absolutely no one.