Anda's Game by Cory Doctorow Read Free Book Online Page B

in-game shop, though Anda was pretty sure they'd come from a real-world goth shop in Camden Town.
    She stomped her boots, one-two, thump-thump, like thunder on the stage. "Who's in, chickens? Who wants to be a girl out-game and in?"
    Anda jumped to her feet. A Fahrenheit, with her own island! Her head was so full of it that she didn't notice that she was the only one standing. The other girls stared at her, a few giggling and whispering.
    "That's all right, love," Liza called, "I like enthusiasm. Don't let those staring faces rattle yer: they're just flowers turning to look at the sky. Pink scrubbed shining expectant faces. They're looking at you because you had the sense to get to your feet when opportunity came — and that means that someday, girl, you are going to be a leader of women, and men, and you will kick arse. Welcome to the Clan Fahrenheit."
    She began to clap, and the other girls clapped too, and even though Anda's face was the color of a lollipop-lady's sign, she felt like she might burst with pride and good feeling and she smiled until her face hurt.

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    > Anda,
    her sergeant said to her,
    > how would you like to make some money?
    > Money, Sarge?
    Ever since she'd risen to platoon leader, she'd been getting more missions, but they paid gold — money wasn't really something you talked about in-game.
    The Sarge — sensible boobs, gigantic sword, longbow, gloriously orcish ugly phiz — moved her avatar impatiently.
    > Something wrong with my typing, Anda?
    > No, Sarge,
    she typed.
    > You mean gold?
    > If I meant gold, I would have said gold. Can you go voice?
    Anda looked around. Her door was shut and she could hear her parents in the sitting-room watching something loud on telly. She turned up her music just to be safe and then slipped on her headset. They said it could noise-cancel a Blackhawk helicopter — it had better be able to overcome the little inductive speakers suction-cupped to the underside of her desk. She switched to voice.
    "Hey, Lucy," she said.
    "Call me Sarge!" Lucy's accent was American, like an old TV show, and she lived somewhere in the middle of the country where it was all vowels, Iowa or Ohio. She was Anda's best friend in-game but she was so hardcore it was boring sometimes.
    "Hi Sarge," she said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. She'd never smart off to a superior in-game, but v2v it was harder to remember to keep to the game norms.
    "I have a mission that pays real cash. Whichever paypal you're using, they'll deposit money into it. Looks fun, too."
    "That's a bit weird, Sarge. Is that against Clan rules?" There were a lot of Clan rules about what kind of mission you could accept and they were always changing. There were curb-crawlers in gamespace and the way that the Clan leadership kept all the mummies and daddies from going ape-poo about it was by enforcing a long, boring code of conduct that was meant to ensure that none of the Fahrenheit girlies ended up being virtual prozzies for hairy old men in raincoats on the other side of the world.
    "What?" Anda loved how Lucy quacked What? It sounded especially American. She had to force herself from parroting it back. "No, geez. All the executives in the Clan pay the rent doing missions for money. Some of them are even rich from it, I hear! You can make a lot of money gaming, you know."
    "Is it really true?" She'd heard about this but she'd assumed it was just stories, like the kids who gamed so much that they couldn't tell reality from fantasy. Or the ones who gamed so much that they stopped eating and got all anorexic. She wouldn't mind getting a little anorexic, to be honest. Bloody podge.
    "Yup! And this is our chance to get in on the ground floor. Are you in?"
    "It's not — you know, pervy , is it?"
    "Gag me. No. Jeez, Anda! Are you nuts? No — they want us to go kill some guys."
    "Oh, we're good at that!"

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    The mission took them far from Fahrenheit Island, to a cottage on the far side of the largest