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</div>Rachel Millard, Ray to her friends, had work hard and long to become a systems administrator in The Game, the brand new MMORPG that let you design whatever avatar you liked with the only restrictions being on sexually explicit ones in the under-16 areas. The walking penises and talking vaginas had peaked and fizzled out as serious gamers had invaded the game. Ray had a personal hatred of the movie "The Sound Of Music", because of the line "Ray, A Drop Of Golden Sun". She was anything but. White skinned, with dark red hair and freckles, tall and pudgy. But in The Game, ah, there, she was Ray The Golden, Sorceress, Shape-Shifter. Sys-Admins (and there were a dozen or so of them dotted around the world) had magical powers, were invincible in combat, and could freely change from one avatar to another.<br/><br/>She was actually a full-time employee of the company that ran the game, and as such got her internet connection for free. she was also a highly adept programmer and hacker - well, technically, now she had 'sold out', she was a counter-hacker, but she actually spent most of her time when not actually gaming, building new areas to explore. But right now, she was far to interested in stopping a fight that was getting out of hand. She materialised her avatar, a 2m tall golden woman in a golden chain-mail bikini, right in the middle if the conflict. PvP was allowed in most areas of the game, but this was actually bullying - she'd been monitoring the situation for a few minutes. "Stop!" She ordered.<br/><br/>Everyone froze. Those with VR systems would see the word "Stop" floating before them in big red letters, while those with flat screens would have a pop-up window with the word in it.<br/><br/>She confronted the three homophobic bullies who were picking on the two guys that were just trying to find a quiet place to make out. (She actually knew, because she had access to their account details, that in real life both of them were female, which made her chuckle). The point however was that racism, sexism, homophobia, heterophobia, religious extremism, political extremism, all were explicitly outlawed by the game's rules. "You've had three warnings," she told two of the bullies. "You're banned. Both of you!" A spark flew dramatically from her fingertip, striking both the avatars, which instantly shrivelled to black dust and blew away. The ban order contained a little worm virus that back-hacked the two connections to the source IP addresses and wiped the UI from their systems, setting a BIOS flag to prevent it ever being loaded again, then transmitted the IP data back to the game's guard server. "You," She turned to the third bully. "First offence, suspended for a week. DON'T do it again!" Again the spark, again the avatar shrivelled to dust. She turned on the crowd who had been watching.<br/><br/>"The rest of you... Those who reported this, thank you. You all get a gold coin to spend in the store. The rest of you, all have a black mark on your record, which you will need to work off. Resume!" And everyone was able to move again. She ignored the protests of people saying they had been about to report it. In fact the black mark was fiction, but it was a harmless fiction and in fact did some good as people tried to do good deeds to work them off. She turned to the two young men (a woman in her fifties and a woman in her thirties), and asked if they were alright? She gave them a quick boost of strength and stamina and, as a gesture of goodwill, levelled both avatars up.<br/><br/>She was just done with that when they seemed to fizzle and vanish. The entire system fritzed, and suddenly Ray was sitting in her chair in her apartment, the VR set black across her eyes, the speakers dead, and her glove encased hands reaching for the restart button on the console.<br/><br/><i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'">LOADING: PLEASE WAIT</span></i><br/><br/>She waited.<br/><br/><i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'">Access Denied. Server Error. Please Try Later</span></i><br/><br/>"Oh...?" This wasn't supposed to happen. She grabbed up her tablet from where it had fallen on the floor and logged into the Sys-Admin's private chatroom. She was the first one in, but soon all the admins who had been on-line, and two who were just coming on, were logged in, trying to figure out what was going on. Someone had the bright idea to video-call the game's head office. A lab tech with a panicked expression answered.<br/><br/>"What?"<br/><br/>Ray spoke up. "Hi, the system went down and we can't get back in, what's going on?"<br/><br/>"What? Who are you? Get off this line...."<br/><br/>"We're the system administrators." Ray took a deep breath and counted to ten. Obviously something serious had happened."<br/><br/>"Huh? Oh... OH! Ah... Uh... Sorry. Maybe you can help? She went in, and it glitched and we can't get her back out! It's running, the system is running... she flat-lined, we had to restart her heart, she's on a ventilator, keeping her alive...It's up and she's in there, with maximum effect and minimal safety..."<br/><br/>Ray looked blankly at the screen, seeing the same blank expression in the faces of the others. "Uh, sorry, who are you talking about?"<br/><br/>The legendary, one and only, Jasper, apparently. The supra-genius who had created The Game as a platform to test her invention, or so rumour had it. A total immersion chair. And she was testing it, and that had caused the glitch. The system techs had cut all access to the game, in order to protect her, because, unable as they were to pull her out, and given the weakened condition of her body, there was a good chance, that if anything bad happened to her, she could die.<br/><br/>Ray listened to the breathless explanation and nodded. "Let me in. Just me. I know every byte of that code. I wrote more than half of it! I can find out how to get her out!" She listened to a coiple of sensible suggestions,. plugged her tablet into the console's auxiliary port, and slipped her gloves and helmet back on. The tablet would stay connected to the videoconference and would transmit everything she saw and heard to the others. She hit the restart button.<br/><br/><i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'">LOADING: PLEASE WAIT</span></i><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center">=============================================================​</div><br/>The winged horse flew down into the village street and landed, trotted up to Jasper. It snorted, folded it's wings and then spoke. "My Lady, I have come to collect you. We are waiting for you to join us?" It knelt and a silver saddle materialised on it's back. "If you would please mount, My Lady, I will carry you swiftly to your destiny!"