1 CHAPTER 1 ( A frolicking Gamroth)

Our head editor, Gamroth, knew how to surprise everyone in the office. His real name was Alexie Ilyich, of course, but behind his back, the only thing anyone ever called him was Gamroth. He was imposingly tall, had a powerful build, was hairy as a bush, and spoke with a booming voice. Sometimes, he'd curse up such a storm that even correspondents accustomed to war zones and other hot spots were impressed by the variety and intricacy of his lan-guage. At others, you'd find him in the editorial office chatting with the Koreans in their native tongue. Once in a while, he'd even drop some breakdance moves at corporate parties.

And every time, the wide-eyed expressions of everyone else in the office (and we'd seen just about everything there was to see) would elicit the same response, "What are you so surprised about? Back in the day, I..." That would be followed by, "...served on a submarine," "...acted in a movie," "...spent a year in Seoul." The list goes on. And it didn't matter when it looked like there might be a discrepancy in his timeline; if Gamroth said it, it was true.

And that brings us to this particular day, as I picked up my phone to hear his voice, "Milford, is that you? Sober?" You've got to be kidding me. Only once had I ever shown up to work drunk, and that was after a long party more than a year before. Needless to say, it was an occasion he refused to forget, enjoying every chance he had to throw it in my face.

"Come over to my office."

When the boss asked you to come to his office, it meant somebody needed something—and I was never that somebody. I could do without those little taunts, but what could I do? I stepped through the door to see that something was wrong He was sitting at his desk with a thundercloud expression on his face that Genghis Khan, himself, would have been proud of.

This can't be good.

"Milford, it's about time you did some work around here."

I was right: it looked like I was the day's sacrifice to our fearless leader. He really was a vampire—couldn't go to sleep until he'd gorged himself on someone's blood.

"You call this journalism? I call it crap. And everyone else does fabulous work! Take Gilbert. She got a job as a bank teller, worked for a month, and got an inside scoop on their HR problems. They hire country bumpkins, leave them on probation, and pay them so little they're jealous of bums on the street outside. They enjoy these young little bodies and then fire them the day before their contract is up."

He waved his hand. "Hell, Sevastyanov worked with the police to uncover an underground casino. So maybe he just wanted to write an article about a casino he had found, and maybe he got drunk and blabbed to an old friend, and maybe that friend worked for the police. But they figured it out. He got an official award from the cops, and that same night, the casino cracked his skull with a pipe—a bonus, I guess. That may have landed him in the hospital, but our numbers are up, and that's the important thing. And what about you?"

"What about me?" The defense is ready, your honor. "Gilbert has her "Give it a Try' column, and Sevastyanov is on the crime beat. If you care to remem-ber, all I have is the society column. It's one long string of nothing. What is there to write about? Who's fighting with whom; who cursed who; which men are sleeping with which other men; how we're all just drinking our lives away? It's the same people traipsing from one club to another, doing the same thing day after day." I paused as at thought struck me. "Well, sometimes they throw in a little cocaine or heroin for good measure, to spice things up a bit."

Gamroth grunted and said, "TIl give you that. People aren't who they used to be... Just take you, for instance, showing up for work straight off a bender." He saw the glare on my face and waved it away. "Okay, okay, I'm just kidding. But really, your articles lately have been rough. No, let's call a spade a spade; they're terrible, and that's why I'm giving you a story."

I wilted on the spot. Gamroth had decided to give me a story? Himself? Of his own free will? Up was down, black was white, and hell had frozen over. After all, he might as well have had a sign over his door that read, "Let your imagination run wild, you parasites, and don't forget to liven up the facts. And if that's not what you're about, then don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." And here he was giving me a story? I looked at him warily…

"Okay," Gamroth said unfazed. "Do you happen to know what the most popular form of entertainment is right now?" Again, he waved any answer away. "Eh, don't answer that—you'll just mutter something about booze. Virtual worlds are currently at the top of the list—the latest generation, I mean, with full immersion. You know, where there's a capsule you get into, and they attach some kind of electrodes to your skull. Then voilà, you're transported into another reality where you're covered in iron with a club in your hand...or a sword. Whatever.

Gamroth paused for emphasis. "They say your real life is THERE, and you come back here just to wolf down some food and go to the bathroom. It's ridiculous, obviously, but there must be something to it if so many people are doing it. I want you to try it, see what it's like, do some fighting, and write an article..., actually, six or seven feature-length stories with follow-ups."

"Alexie," I quickly whined. "I don't play games! You should really have Gilbert do it; she's the one who should 'Give it a Try.' But no, she gets to be an animator in Turkey or work for someone on Rublevka.[1] I'm the one stuck climbing into capsules. And you know what—"

"Oh, stop it!" roared Gamroth, shaking his disheveled, uncut, gray mane. "All Gilbert knows are the letters on her computer, and sometimes she has problems with those. Just recently, she was looking for the 'any' key on her keyboard. She couldn't find it and spent the whole morning crying. And don't give me that crap about how you don't play games. Do you think I don't know about those office LAN battles you started a few years back? You obviously know something about games."

"Where would I even get a capsule?" I broke out the big guns, playing on his stinginess. "I know how much they cost. And subscriptions cost an arm and a leg. You think I'm paying for all that myself?"

"You don't have to pay for it," Gamroth grunted. "Remember the people in suits who came by the other week? No? It doesn't matter. They were from Radeon, the company that designs the capsules and the game, of course. Naturally, they gave me a capsule and a game certificate. And that got me thinking about how I don't do any of that stuff…"

Then, it all made sense, the old fart. Jeans—it had to be jeans—advertisements, usually paid for in cash, that masquerade as part of an article or movie. So he was getting a cut under the table. What do you know?

"…and a VIP account for a whole six months. I don't think people like that would give us just any old crap, and whatever they made, can't be that bad. So, I want you to walk around in there, check it out, and write an objective, good—let me emphasise, GOOD—article. And if it isn't good, we'll have another talk about your alcohol problems. Or maybe I'll just fire you for betraying the level of trust we've placed in you. Anyway, tomorrow the capsule will be delivered, so make sure you're at home starting at around two. As soon as they set it up, get in there. You have two weeks...no, make that a month. Just so long as I have a six- or seven-part series on my desk at the end of it. And write something about Radeon—the capsule is comfortable; your back doesn't hurt afterward; it's easy on the ass; something like that..."

If I was logical about it, Gamroth's stream of consciousness should have sent me off to drink my sorrows away with a drooping head—if only to maintain my reputation. Hey, if you say I'm an alcoholic, that's what I'll be. But I wasn't in the mood for booze. Instead, I quickly gathered the papers on my desk, stuffed them into a drawer, and announced to my officemates, "Ciao, suckers. Gamroth sent me on a work trip for a month, so you all are welcome to turn green with envy."

"I hope you're on your way to Chechnya or Antarcti-ca," Kaleria Georgievna chimed in sarcastically. She wrote the "Our Little Friends" column about pets. We all called her the Rat, thanks to her toothy face, gray hair, and gnawing personality.

"The perfect place for you!" she declared.

"Nope." I shook my head. "It's Sochi for a month to write about life on the beach. The velvet season[2] is coming up, so everyone who's anyone is there!"

"Son of a bi-i-itch!" groaned half the office, and I ran out with a wave of my briefcase. Everyone was about to go jump down Gamroth's throat about how he paid the annoying kid to spend the month of June in Sochi instead of someone better or more decorated, and I wasn't about to stick around for him to make life miserable for me. But really, what business did he have bringing up my drunken adventure or giving me jeans assignments? And without offering me even a tiny cut!

On my way out of the building, I contemplated my profession. The work of a journalist is something like that of a detective. First, you collect information, then you mull it over for a while, and then... Well, then you finish the job. Detectives use the information they gain secretly against a specific person or group of people, so long as they had an agreement ahead of time. For journalists, the opposite is true. We put the information before the public, and in so doing, earn ourselves a reputation and enough money to put food on the table.

~ ~ ~