After the murder, and the complete lack of a police response:
Several more days passed, then
another week, then another, and still Bernard could not think of work.
Even his engineers, the only
people in the company who understood him, told Bernard he should leave the
studio until the rooftop structure was down and the murder business taken care
of.
Bernard refused. A man’s dream
video game studio is a man’s castle, he figured, and he was going to stay right
there and see that things were cleared up as quickly as possible—even though no
one seemed to be doing anything about anything.
Bernard didn't even answer voice
mail and email. Only his engineers could reach him, and that was in the virtual worlds of several Internet video games they knew he would be playing. It would
take them only a matter of time to figure out which player was Bernard—usually
because he stood out by beating everyone.
Then surprised virtual onlookers
would see some giant combat soldier armed with automatic rifles and handfuls of
grenades approaching a knight in battle armor with ray guns in each hand, and
the soldier would look at the knight with death in his eyes and say something
like: “You didn't answer my email.”
The knight would step back,
consider his options. “Sorry. I happened to have been liberating Iberia
“Yeah, well, listen, can I have
next week off? I’m in a ‘Guitar Hero’ contest,” the soldier would say.
“Very well, if you feel that a game is more important than your work.”
“I do,” the soldier would growl,
and the two of them would launch into mortal combat, usually with Bernard
winning.
Ä Ä Ä
A loud bang echoes from the hill, and half a second later an oversize dead body shoots through the air, arms flapping, and splats against the beach house’s upstairs window, smashing the glass, then falls to the street below.
Ä Ä Ä
Check out early previews of Clouded Ambitions. the coming sequel to Flying the Coop:
Woeful WasteWorld
Within a hundred miles ofTransylvania , the zombies were replaced by vampires and occasional werewolves. These new obstacles didn't come in the numbers the zombies had, but if Bernard hadn't been ready (he had already been killed and re-spawned several times), he wouldn't have made it this far. You see, vampires being dead, after all, were not easy to kill—until you learned to buy silver bullets.
Within a hundred miles of
It was getting late as Patricia and Chen made their way out of the mall, but Patricia had promised to find some sightseeing for Chen. Walking to their rental car, she took out a list of sights O’Brian had given her, hoping to find somewhere worth stopping on the way back to the Pendrite.
"Wo zhende buliaojie tade zhao ben (I really don’t understand the story),” Guo Shangzhen complained, and judging by the agreeing murmur echoing through the room, his colleagues were equally confused. Oh, the project was intriguing. They were creating rooms and halls, as they would be for any video game project, but the plans called for novel features—audio and temperature sensors, as well as cameras built into the ceilings, the walls, and even the floors in some places.
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