attachments to the document he was still holding started to throb. It was the census list. The other was some feet away, closer to the desk. When Dev beckoned it closer, he found that it was Ron Ruis’ Microcosm status report for that morning.
“Huh,” Dev said, enlarging that document and scrolling down it to find a name that also appeared in the census list. “Really . . . ?”
He poked the name. “Sticky that for me,” he said. “Tag the sticky as ‘investigate.’ Meantime, show me the rack, please.”
At the other end of the office, away past the festoons of documents hanging around the central desk, a wrist-thick horizontal beam of white light appeared. From it hung many shadowy forms which, as Dev made his way over to them, resolved into what at first glimpse could have been taken for bodies. Male and female, human and non-human, monstrous and ordinary, they were all shapes that Dev had invented for himself, or which his staff had invented for him, so that he could walk his worlds undetected and get a sense of what was really going on in there.
He stood there irresolute for a moment, then waved the rack along a little. The shapes fled out of sight to be replaced by new ones. “No,” Dev said. “No, no, no . . .” The display changed again, then again. Finally Dev’s eyes lit on one seeming that he hadn’t seen before. “What the—”
He pulled it off the rack, looked at the front of it, turned it around, snickered. Okay, Dev said, and shrugged into it as if into a suit jacket. “Mirror, please?”
A reflective sheet appeared out of nothing in front of him. Dev snorted, amused. “Fine,” he said. “Kill that. Omnitopia game management—”
“Good afternoon, Dev,” said the dulcet control voice.
“And the same to you, game of mine,” Dev said. “First things first. I want a playback of the incident referenced in Frank’s précis document. Then a walkthrough of the incursion and excursion sites. Meanwhile, screen all in-game feeds and news services for references and reactions to the referenced incident. Plot against this month’s emo index and the baseline index from a year ago, and while I’m on walkabout, start showing me the twenty highest, twenty lowest, and a Monte Carlo sampling from the middle of the bell curve.”
“All right, Dev,” said the control voice. “Where do you want to start the walkthrough?”
“West side of the plaza,” Dev said. “Best view of the incursion route.”
Part of the black glass floor peeled itself downward from the floor level and folded itself into steps. Dev headed down them, whistling softly and feeling a sudden relief as the darkness of Omnitopian night washed around him, the plaza’s torches and magelights throwing shadows away in every direction from the stones of the Ring of Elich. Okay, he thought, let’s see what needs to be done.
Rik heaved a sigh of relief when he finally stepped through the gateway into Langley B. It was starting to seem as if he’d been trying to get here for days, but now he stood at last in the midst of the White Arcades at the heart of the City of Artificers, the arch-surrounded plaza at the hill-town’s top that was Langley’s primary access to the Ring of Elich. As usual, the marble-paved space inside the arcades was full of midweek traffic: the stalls and stands that belonged to the casual traders were being cruised hard by various people and creatures in mystical robes and wizard’s hats, long black trench coats (usually hiding samurai swords glowing a dangerous blue from inside their scabbards, and sometimes right through them), and in a few cases, motorcyclists’ leathers or ornamental ladies’ armor with about as much coverage as your average bikini.
Rik skirted carefully around one such lady—he’d run into them in the past and they could be testy: something to do with cold chain mail against the skin, he’d always imagined. Must give you some awful kind of rash. But, leaving the predictable wizards and mages aside, you got a lot of aligned and unaligned warrior types here as well from Macrocosms and Microcosms everywhere. Langley B was famous right across Omnitopia for the quality and variety of its magian and wizardly gear, everything from the simplest basic outfitting—robes and so forth—up to the fanciest custom magic weapons. Almost everybody who worked in one of the feudal or magical scenarios came here to shop or commission materiel eventually, as there were more arms- and