into Omnitopia had been like Christmas and all your birthdays and your wedding day rolled into one. Except that it costs a lot less than your wedding day.
The blue crackle of transit fire leaped from stone pillar to stone post of the Ring of Elich, connecting the lintels at the top of the circle. Players stepped through the doorways, verified themselves with the game systems, and vanished. From other portals around the ring, other gateways, players appeared from worlds far off in the Omnitopian Pattern of universes, or worlds very close. Here came a ten- man cadre of a warrior guild returning from some battle, possibly even the one in Pandora that Arnulf had been considering. They were carrying two downed colleagues, and behind them came the guild’s paymaster, staggering under sacks of loot, while behind him came a dragon on a lead, panniers over its huge back, carrying even more. Over there, a laughing group of human “crossbreed” adventurers, dressed like Elves in dagged tunics and bright hose, with bows slung over their shoulders, vanished into a gateway that lay briefly open on the green fields of Whereaway. Each time a group transited, the vista behind them flickered to show where they were going, or where they were coming from. World after world, Macrocosms, Microcosms, foreboding landscapes and benign ones, mountains and meadows, vast oceans, other planets—they were all there. Other gates revealed race courses full of careening vehicles with exhausts afire, or grim looking concrete labyrinths full of people and creatures shooting at each other. The vistas flickered in and out sometimes too quickly to get a grasp of what they were. The Ring of Elich was the second-by-second proof by which Omnitopia lived up to its name. Any kind of game you could think of was here somewhere, either as a Macrocosm built by the game company’s in- house staff, or as Microcosms built by favored gamers. Endless possibilities, endless challenges were here—and at least part of the buzz in the Ring right now was because the whole Omnitopia scenario was about to widen out again in three days’ time, on Midsummer’s Eve, when the walls between the worlds traditionally got thin.
Arnulf stood there a moment longer, drinking it all in. Just three days until the rollout, he thought. Another shift in the paradigm. What are they going to pull on us this time? What’s going to happen here? I can’t wait to find out! The hair actually stood up on the back of his neck at the thought.
But then he took a deep breath. Outside, in the real world, time was flying: Angela was going to have words with him if he took too long about this. Okay, Arnulf thought. First, out to Langley B. That‘s going to take about half my transport gold for today. Head to the artificer’s there, pick up that new magian kit. Then back here and do the gating to Meruvelt. Get those robes, then meet up with Tom and see if his people are really serious about doing that run into Pandora . . . they didn’t seem to have their minds made up the last time. Stop in the tavern with them, shoot the breeze for a while, then head back home. Angela did say she wanted me to mow the lawn tonight—
“Excuse me?”
Arnulf turned around and found himself looking at a gawky young human male, dark-haired and pale, dressed in Omnitopian beginner’s standard issue: the brown cloak, bleached linen tunic, cotton hose, and brown leather boots of a low-credit kern. He was almost the archetypal Clueless Noob—almost certainly some kid in here for the first time, caught up by the worldwide hype about the expansion rollout. “Well met, comrade,” Arnulf said putting out a hand. “What’s the score?”
The noob was so new that he didn’t even know yet to clasp Arnulf’s arm in return of the greeting. “Uh, yeah,” the noob said, “everything’s going pretty good. I think.” He looked past Arnulf, staring at the Ring. “Except, uh, I’m not real sure where to go from here . . .”
Rik/Arnulf kept the smile off his face. I must have been like this once, he thought. But then who wasn’t? I can never understand the schmucks who like making fun of these poor guys . . . “It’s okay,” Arnulf said. “Everything’s a little overwhelming your first few times. You heading outworld?”
“Oh, yeah, just got my first transit bonus.”
Rik nodded. He’d heard on the feeds that this had been