text: Short-circuited. I am definitely feeling short-circuited.
  
  Because my après school time now has this new team-coding commitment, I am, instead of sleeping, sitting on the floor, leaning back against my bed, feet pressed up against the wall, laptop propped open, busy trying to execute my Vikram rescue plan by leveling up the ladder of Contagion. Yes, this could be kind of a release from the cacophony of people invading my perimeter— Jean, Mae Ann, Scott, even Vik in his role as co-boss, but it's really not.
  
  Not to mention, along with neglecting to calculate the loss of my afternoons, in my pique of caped crusader-ing, I'd also actually forgotten just how much I really don't like this game. Despise is a most apt descriptor, but I'm good with abhor as well.
  
  So while my overtired self is busy underachieving on the leveling-up portion of this game, I am also struggling to keep up with the exciting Contagion global chat channel as it scrolls by.
  
  whizacker3: nah dude. questing the whole way.
  
  quadstra: tag them up.
  
  Péter un plomb.
  
  French for I am going crazy. Well, kind of. Not literally. Literally, it's French for I am breaking a fuse.
  
  Which would be more accurate if I was freaking out going crazy rather than just sitting here bored off my gourd going crazy, but what can I say?
  
  I do know this would be easier, and way more engaging if I happened to like Contagion, and if I had access to a second screen, aka my phone, which still, despite the lifting of our post-LARPing solitary confinement, remains plugged in the living-room outlet right outside my parents' bedroom wall.
  
  And yes, I can answer that one for you, it is abso-freaking-lutely ridiculous that I can have my computer back, but not my phone. I believe the message is intended to be some not-so-subtle motherly reminder that "ll y aura des consequences." There will be consequences.
  
  And, of course, they will hear it if it rings ...or pings. Lip curl.
  
  StarShine32: Nipah. Shit.
  
  Snarl interruptus. I watch the shimmering net of the virus surround StarShine32, and as the disorientation begins and she, at least I think she, but I guess StarShine could be a he, or a they, whatever, spins, right into some stream of goo, and ew, there goes a foot. Ooh. Ow. Too close to the edge, Starshine ...ignore the rules, suffer the consequences.
  
  I give an internal laugh as I watch the expletives fly across the chat screen. You go right ahead and scream. I know just how you feel.
  
  But I am nothing if not determined.
  
  Ergo (another great underused word), welcome to night nine of my personal and still unsolved quest, The Case of the Purloined Plunder, wherein intrepid sleuth, that would be me, hunts for the person or persons who have made off with Vikram's stuff.
  
  And yes, you probably thought this madness would pass. That it would all go away if not by the next morning, perhaps the following day.
  
  Hey, I know I did.
  
  I honestly thought by now I would be sitting here, catching up with, hmmmm, a bit of fanfic (you didn't really think I was going to say homework, did you?) or maybe, I don't know, bingeing Scooby Doo reruns, because you know, I ridiculously believed that maybe the game-maker would have sorted all this out and Vikram's inventory would have been returned and I would no longer be needed, but I would have huge brownie points for having had my friend's back. Perhaps might even have been the teensiest bit lauded. "No. Really." I hold my hands out and head bob just a bit, "It was no biggie."
  
  Yes, I can admit to that.
  
  I even thought I would help my heroism with a bit of action. Launched Twitter, followed @spitpolishgames, even thought to check out their feed, see if anyone else is busy screaming about being ripped off, or buying/selling stuff. Dead end. And with no comrades-in-misery appearing, I DM about Vik's stolen stuff. Had a great chat with "Dan" who is appropriately, respectfully appalled, and knows nothing. But he will "look into it" and get back to me.
  
  I wonder if that will be in my lifetime. Because now I'm sitting here on night nine and I still got nada. Of course, it could still happen. At some point. Maybe. If the universe tilts another degree, or two, or ten, in my favor.
  
  And as much as I want to tell myself to let it go, I am a dog with a bone, especially when it comes to my friends. Faut pas toucher mes amis.
  
  I like to think this is what makes me a flawsome— highly aware of my flaws and yet, still awesome— individual.
  
  So I'd like to think.
  
  But first I'd have to confess a few things.
  
  One, for the record, I did skip one night completely because my feelings got really bashed in, but that's getting ahead of myself. Two, I haven't actually gamed for nine nights. I didn't start off gaming. I began my adventure by thinking. Strategizing. Mulling my options. There seemed to be two best ways to catch a thief in the act, or at least red-handed, with the goods.
  
  Catching them in the act seemed to me like a needle-in-the-haystack activity, but catching them with the goods, maybe not so much. All I need to do is find the gray market for Contagion and see if I can spot Vikram's loot for sale. Now I know it's not quite as simple as all that. I understand if there's a thief selling a couple of aspirin, I'm never going to be able to peg that back to Vikram, but a person doesn't get to the highest levels of a game without acquiring some very exclusive and rare artifacts.
  
  Meaning, if I can find the right bazaar, I've got me a thief.
  
  And according to Imani, retail therapy cures just about everything. I'm game. And yes, that pun is intended.
  
  So for four nights in a row, this is exactly what I do. I hit up every site I can find selling anything and everything Contagion, and now I have zip. Just empty cart after empty cart.
  
  It would seem the Contagion gray market isn't exactly a hubbub of bustling enterprise. There's not a whole lot out there, and virtually everything I manage to find is ordinary, all falling under the category I labeled the "lazy-player-load." You know, the "if you don't want to spend three hours to earn an antidote, buy it here, buy it now."
  
  So while there's a bunch of entry-level antidotes or a ton of ten-second safety masks, there is nothing I can find that would have belonged to a top-tier player. There's also nothing listed to indicate whether any item is new and might be a precursor of a load to come.
  
  Which really doesn't make any sense.
  
  Why rip him off if you're not selling it?
  
  Time for a new plan.
  
  Night five I embark upon what becomes two even more frustrating nights of electronically eavesdropping, scanning through pages and pages of global chat, certain there would be some idiot griefer giving himself away and, hey voilà!
  
  But no, no such luck.
  
  Which brings me to night six. By the time I hit night six, all I hear is the Laugh of The Flynn, busy snickering at my self-imposed, rapidly failing enterprise. "Plan? You call this a plan?"
  
  And although this moment is being brought to you by my own imagination, it is still enough to make me double down on my efforts, albeit with a bit of petulance, as I can't even have the satisfaction of slugging the imaginary Flynn in his imaginary shoulder.
  
  It is now somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, when a desperate, trying-to convince-me-to-go-to-sleep brain cell gives one last pre-burnout power surge, and suddenly I know the first part of the answer.
  
  Or maybe it's the first part of the question.
  
  Although I'm already way past peak performance and happily hypnagogic, it's kind of fascinating how much genius can be delivered into this last gasp before sleep state. It's like your sleeping brain becomes a blank universe and then blindingly bright stars burst in. Even supernovas.
  
  Which is why rather than think it out, I let the laptop slide down and continue upon my path to dreamland, where I am sure genius is waiting for me. Still on the floor, I am sliding down, pulling my blanket right off the bed and onto me, and flicker. My last memory is I have it. I know I do.