A Card Game That Makes Players Fight Over Pop Culture

courtesy Local No. 12

What best represents the soul of America: The Bible, or Facebook? Which is more style over substance, a Jackson Pollack painting or Powerpoint? Sound like the kind of thing you’d enjoy fighting about with your friends? Welcome to The Metagame, a new card deck that lets you debate the most important issues of our time with just one or two people—or 2,000.

Indeed, the first time someone started playing The Metagame , more than 3,000 other people joined in. It all started at the Game Developer’s Conference in 2011, when game designers Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Eric Zimmerman simply started handing out stacks of cards to people. The idea behind the game was simple: One person plays an opinion card with a question, everyone else puts down a card with the cultural item they think is the best match, and then debates—or arguments—ensue. It was a game about games, created for game designers, and soon it was a very big hit.

“People at GDC already spend a lot of time debating and talking about games,” says Macklin. “We just made a game layer on top of that.” By the end of that week in 2011, it wasn’t uncommon to see people congregating in the halls of the conference between sessions with the cards, debating the relative aesthetic beauty of Pac-Man versus Asteroids.

It was so successful the Brooklyn-based trio decided to incorporate under the moniker Local No. 12 and launch a Kickstarter for the game in the midst of the conference. They quickly raised more than twice the $10,000 they had asked for. Although the original version focused solely on videogames, the new version being released today expands the game’s scope to include more broad culture topics—everything from film to comic books to architecture.

We're inspired by the idea that players could take our operating system and modify it and make their own games too. Eric Zimmerman

“It wraps the idea of play around what we all want to do anyways, which is share our opinions and our ideas about the culture that we love,” says Sharp.

It’s also a very flexible game, one that accommodate almost limitless players, and comes with instructions for six different versions you can play using the same deck. “We like to think about it as an operating system, where you can run different games on it,” says Zimmerman. Although there’s a massively multiplayer version—like the one played at GDC—that’s perfect for big parties, there’s another one that works fine with just two people. They also hope players won’t be limited by the options they offer; one of the first rules listed in the instructions is “You Can Change the Rules.”

“We’re inspired by the idea that players could take our operating system and modify it and make their own games too,” says Zimmerman.

If the card-matching principle behind The Metagame sounds a little bit like Cards Against Humanity , that’s no accident. The creators behind Cards Against Humanity were among the thousands who played the first version of The Metagame at GDC in 2011, and have cited it as one of their primary inspirations.

“And they’ve inspired us too,” adds Macklin. “It’s like being a musician. You get influenced by other bands that are your contemporaries, and vice versa.”

But there are key differences between the games, too. The Metagame’s operating system approach means there are far more ways to play it, for example, and the content is far more PG-13 than the R-rated and proudly vulgar Cards Against Humanity. It’s also much more oriented towards intellectual debates than crass jokes—the sort of game that’s perfect for people who love to argue with their friends, or just argue, period.

“The Metagame is more about opinion,” says Sharp. “It’s about talking about culture and media, about our tastes, and where we place our values.”

Zimmerman offers an example: Imagine someone plays the opinion card that asks, “Which is more beautiful?” In response, his friends put down culture cards for the Pyramids of Giza, the New York subway system, and legwarmers. “It becomes a conversation about what the nature of beauty really is. What does it mean? When you’re making these decisions and discussing them, you become a philosopher of culture.”

Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Eric Zimmerman courtesy Local No. 12

But that doesn’t mean introverts have to sit this one out. “Not all the games involve arguing and debating,” says Macklin. History 101, for example, is a version that challenges players to place the culture cards in chronological order. (Quick: Which came first, the Theory of Relativity, or sporks?) “Some of the games are about coming up with something creative to say, putting the cards in the right order, or just being clever in the cards that you’re choosing. You can be quiet too.”

The Metagame has been infectiously popular outside of GDC as well, not only on Kickstarter—where they raised an additional $54,467 for the newest edition—but also in their daily lives. “The three of us always have a deck, so we’re constantly playing it with people and getting feedback,” says Sharp. “The other night I went across the street to a bar with a copy of the game with me, and within five minutes of sitting there with the box on the bar, a game with people I did not know had broken out. I had to leave the box there when I went home because I couldn’t get them to stop.”

They also sought feedback through a Google forum where players could comment or even offer suggestions for cards they’d like to see. And the team listened: Some percentage of the new culture and opinion cards in the edition released today came directly from crowdsourced ideas. After the game launches, they also plan to release a downloadable version of all the cards for people to preview before they buy, or event print out themselves if they want to.

Although they’re hesitant to call it an educational game “because that makes it sound like it’s not fun,” says Zimmerman, at its heart The Metagame is an interactive experience that’s fundamentally centered around intellect and passion—and of course, a desire to share your opinions with the people around you.

“But,” says Macklin, “you can still play it when you’re drunk.”

The Electric Scooter That Could Make Battery Swapping Work Launches This Summer

The electric scooter company that thinks it can transform urban mobility and the way we store and manage electricity, is opening for business in Taipei.

Gogoro is the long-hyped, well-funded startup that revealed its debut product, the Smartscooter, at CES this year. It’s a sleek looking ride with impressive stats, but the real innovation is the system that lets customers swap depleted batteries for fresh ones at ATM-sized stations.

A pilot program starts this week, with a full commercial launch planned for this summer.

Battery swapping for electric cars has an unimpressive history (see: Better Place), but there’s reason to think it could work for scooters. The batteries in the Smartscooter weigh just 20 pounds, so you don’t need complicated and expensive machines to handle the swapping process. A rider can easily pull them out and pop fresh ones in. Based on a Gogoro demo, the whole process should take six seconds. The stations will be small and affordable, and easy to put in enough places to make the idea of range anxiety disappear.

The pilot program will be open to 100 riders, about half of whom will be selected from the general public (and who’ll get to ride the scooter for free). The goal is to log 100,000 hours of riding time, “to start stress-testing the infrastructure and stress-testing the vehicle itself,” CEO Horace Luke says. The infrastructure bit is especially important: If a rider can’t easily get to a swap station, or does get there only to find no fully charged batteries, the whole idea is kaput. “So we’re taking the beta program to the street to really work those kinks out.”

Based on that data, in a few months Gogoro will start a “very aggressive deployment” of swapping stations, going for “critical mass” right away, Luke says. He won’t say how many stations will be hitting the street, but given their small size and relatively low cost—less than $10,000—you can count on seeing a whole lot. The Taipei metropolitan area, which includes Taipei and New Tapei City, covers 105 square miles, about twice the size of San Francisco, but still manageable. And the location has its benefits.

The company chose to start its work in Taipei largely because of the city’s enthusiasm for becoming a “smart city”—New Taipei City has installed more than 10,000 WiFi hot spots and more than 90 percent of households have internet. Residents have a “good adoption history to smart technologies,” Luke says.

It also helps that the city’s working with Gogoro to offer “a very comprehensive subsidy program,” similar to the tax benefits US drivers receive for buying an electric vehicle. Riding a Gogoro scooter will also come with “privileged parking” near building entrances.

Gogoro has so far been quiet on one of the biggest questions about its business model: How much riders will pay for the scooter and the right to swap out depleted batteries for fresh ones. “We haven’t settled on a cost yet,” Luke says, but that should be settled and announced before the program launches for real this summer.

In the meantime, interested consumers can head to the city’s tony Xinyi shopping district, where Gogoro is opening an “experience center”—basically, a store—to get a closer look at the sleek scooter and the company’s plan for changing how we get around.

Why Country Rules the Airwaves: Chronicling the Genre’s Continuing Moment and Challenging Future in One Music-Filled Night

Hunter Hayes takes the stage at the Grand Ole Opry while fans film with their phones. (Image: Connor Skennerton)

The brief walk from dressing room 9 to the stage of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry takes about 20 seconds, but passes decades of country music’s most prized heritage. There’s the photo of Dolly Parton with Paul McCartney, next to the piano Richard Nixon played and just down the hall from the “duets” room inspired by Johnny and June. On this autumn evening, you might bump into bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, or the Riders in the Sky, decked out in Stetsons and fringed western shirts. It’s a walk down memory lane here in country music’s home church, a study in nostalgia and past glory.

But the spunky, kinetic Hunter Hayes brings a new energy to the scene, and as he takes the stage at 9 PM, a gaggle of young fans – perhaps oblivious to the musical history infusing this space, perhaps not – reflexively unsheathe their iPhones. Hayes’s performance is in many ways emblematic of country’s new wave, a movement that has seen the genre rise to a new level of national popularity while attempting to navigate the tension between a rapidly changing demographic – of performers, songwriters, and fans – and a longstanding embrace of tradition.

It wasn’t inevitable that country music would thrive in the globalized world of perpetual Facebook updates, a world whose frenetic pace can be felt in electronica, or whose nouveau riche aspirations are extolled in hip-hop. In fact, the co-occurrence of spiraling technological advances and the continued rise of the country genre – which traditionally has valued more off-the-grid sensibilities – seems almost paradoxical. In what is an increasingly impressive balancing act, the country music industry has straddled the line between tradition and novelty, avoiding Luddite instincts while preserving the social structure and sense of comfort that has resonated in the heartland for decades.

To understand the industry’s challenging bargain with technology – a force that can spread the genre further than ever and exert the cultural pressure to leave it behind – I spent a fast-paced Nashville night with some of the city’s most influential talents.

But first, there was a more immediate problem: some sign-wielding teenage girls were standing in the middle of the road.

*****

Opryland Drive takes the talent from the Briley Parkway to the backstage entrance to the Opry, and some of Hayes’ superfans have set up shop to get a glimpse of their idol. Bedazzled signs profess their love, and some sort of choreographed welcome dance is taking shape. But once it becomes clear there is no Hunter Hayes in this rented Impala, we gain entrance to the parking lot.

An hour before show time, the Opry’s Marketing Director Dan Rogers guides my photographer Connor and I around the backstage area – part museum, part living room – while tracing the institution’s history. To Rogers, technological developments have always been a part of the show that began in the early 1920s and helped launch Nashville toward its title of “Music City.” “This all started when AM radio was a new technology, and the Opry really embraced that,” he explains, as guitars and wardrobe racks glide by. As an early adopter of AM radio methods, the Opry helped bolster and legitimize the technology. Indeed, the novelty of delivering live music to millions of living rooms kick-started the show’s popularity, and Rogers maintains that the show remains an early adopter of marketing and distribution platforms. “We certainly embrace today’s technology”, he says, “with our own Youtube channel, iphone app, and satellite radio station.” Of course, the in spirit of tradition that defines the industry, the show can also still be heard on 650 AM, WSM.

The live production itself, which for much of the year takes place several times per week, is a well-oiled machine. As the curtain rises, sound engineer King Williams gets to work in the monastic control room at the back of the auditorium. He spins knobs and slides dials with practiced finesse, following pre-determined cues from the performers to spotlight the steel guitar here, the banjo there. With 80 sound inputs coming from the stage to his ears, Williams determines what the in-house speakers will amplify and, by extension, what the audience will hear. The output takes into account the sonic idiosyncrasies of the cavernous concert hall, which may not be ideal for a car stereo or a living room. A separate control room mixes and distributes sound for the radio and streaming broadcasts.

Sound Engineer King Williams at work. (Image: Connor Skennerton)

The whole set-up is the inverse of the typical “gold-plated” approach – show business’ instinct to reveal only the shiniest, flashiest features regardless of (or perhaps because of) the talent behind the act. Instead, Williams manipulates top-of-the-line equipment in a hermetically sealed back room while the audience watches the action taking place on a flimsy facsimile red barn stage. The artifice isn’t needed to convince you that you’re watching a world-class concert; it’s there to convince you of the opposite, that you’ve just happened across a jam session at your local barn.

Outside the well-appointed dressing rooms, I put the question of Nashville’s recent rise to Rogers. His response is surprisingly specific. “The summer of 2010,” he says with conviction, “is what did it.” In the throes of historic flooding – an iron bar four feet off the floor marks the high water mark backstage – “the city really came together.” From May to September that year, Rogers and the rest of the Opry production team took the show on the road, moving around town with the iconic mic stands and a show-must-go-on vaudevillian air. The relentless waters damaged millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and music-oriented infrastructure, and the crisis precipitated a soul-searching re-evaluation of the industry’s purpose. In Rogers’ estimation, a focus on wholesome, community-oriented material and a scale back of internecine squabbling struck a chord not only within the regional flood-ravaged community, but also nationwide, as the recession hit a fever pitch. “When things came back online, it was the spark that launched this town on its current rise, I think. A real phoenix rising from the ashes sort of thing.”

Several years later, Nashville is a city transformed. Connor and I geared up for our concert-laden night with some single origin espresso at a café in hipsterville East Nashville, a neighborhood previously considered unsavory. Forbes declared the Nashville area as the 6^th most promising city for job development, Google recently announced its intention to bring its high-speed fiber-optic network to the city, and Outside Magazine has praised its bike lanes and trail system.

The prevailing strains of country music have also continued to evolve in the years since the flood: the “bro country” trend has taken off (complete with the requisite backlash), while tendrils reach laterally into hip-hop (Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” collaboration with Nelly) and pop (Taylor Swift, Sam Hunt). Even “traditional” country sounds a lot different from Garth Brooks and George Strait, as younger artists like Hayes flavor twang-free, crossover-ready melodies with instruments like the mandolin, banjo, and pedal steel.

Nonetheless, Hayes, for one, still identifies as a country artist. “Absolutely. Country is home to me,” he says, shortly before his performance. (The standard Opry show includes a handful of artists; Hayes is headlining this evening with a four-song set.) Commercial radio wouldn’t disagree, but the 24 year-old’s 21^st century life, with his Facebook, tumblr, and Instagram posts, is a far cry from the ranch-owning Lyle Lovett. The tools of the wildly popular modern country trade are unmistakably Millennial. Hayes did all of the songwriting for his breakthrough album on his smartphone, and of his most recent release, “Storyline”, he recalls that “half of the record was done on the bus, it’s mind-boggling that we can do that.”

The relentlessness of modern stardom is a selective trait – if you couldn’t handle it, you wouldn’t be asked to – but Hayes acknowledges the trade-offs. “It changes the way your life is lived,” he says, “in relationships, in keeping in touch with the world – you feel things so much more dramatically because they happen at such a fast pace.”

*****

As Hayes bounces and bops to the outro of his encore, Connor and I peel out of the Opry parking lot, the GPS set for the Bluebird Café. This unassuming venue occupies several hundred square feet in a suburban strip mall; its “locals-in-the-know” charm was blown up when the ABC show “Nashville” made it a centerpiece of its dramatic machinations. Tonight, several local songwriters are performing the hits they’ve penned.

It’s packed; my chair is millimeters from Shane McAnally, who gets through “American Kids”, one of Kenny Chesney’s latest hits, despite a nudge as I reposition to let a waitress past. It’s an intimate family atmosphere, with the witty repartee and knowing barbs of friends who can crack a joke while writing a song about a marriage gone terribly wrong. The quartet takes turns, referring to their famous benefactors on a first name basis: “This is my latest for Miranda [Lambert],” says Natalie Hemby before jumping into “Priscilla”; “Jake [Owen] ended up recording this one,” says Jimmy Robbins of “Beachin’”.

These 30-somethings are the real tastemakers – it’s their words, informed by their lifestyles, that are heard by the tens of millions listening to country radio or watching YouTube videos. For Hemby, modern tools of the trade have made the creative process smoother, if not radically different. “It’s much easier to write – even simple things like using a thesaurus or dictionary online – or getting a rough sense of a melody you’re writing,” she says. It’s also easier to see where your incipient song fits into the larger sonic landscape, by cross-referencing past song titles or chord progressions; doing these sorts of checks on the front end, before resources have been poured into the production, will likely become increasingly important in the wake of the “Blurred Lines” ruling. Luke Laird, another decorated songwriter who’s worked with the industry’s top talents, finds that user-friendly tools have degraded technological barriers and allowed him to fulfill several links in the production chain. With a few programs on his computer, Laird can mix and edit a demo, something that might have taken several people with distinct skill sets a decade ago. “It gives me more control of the demo,” he says, “so I can tailor it to certain artists or managers I might have in mind for the song.”

Despite the improved efficiency of the writing process, there are artistic downsides to the proliferation of technology and the globalized marketing it facilitates. “Sometimes it makes untalented people suddenly talented,” Hemby explains. “It takes away the natural gift that some people have and puts them in competition with people who maybe really aren’t that great. Autotune has come a long way, even I can’t always tell.” Laird finds that the commercial prioritization of mass-appeal hits has sanitized the airwaves and purged the industry of personality, a concern that has been echoed by other onlookers. “When we pitch material to A&R people,” he says, “they want hit songs, songs that will be on the radio; 90 or 95% of the time they want up-tempo songs, which are often less serious. It sucks because as a songwriter, it’s not usually what you would consider your best song.”

One glimmer of hope has been Kacey Musgraves, the Grammy winner who filled a witty, progressive album with songs that got radio play, even if they weren’t stadium-rocking showstoppers. “She’s been successful without having massive hits,” says Laird, who co-wrote many of the songs, “and it really shows that there are a lot of audiences out there, and there will always be a market for good, well-crafted songs.”

*****

In the car leaving the Bluebird, one of Hemby’s most recent hits, “Automatic” (that’s right, for Miranda), comes on the radio. The song traffics in nostalgia more explicitly than most; its chorus makes a case for doing things the old fashioned way, and devoting time and focus to the things that really matter:

Hey, whatever happened to waitin’ your turn

Doing it all by hand,

‘Cause when everything is handed to you

It’s only worth as much as the time put in

It all just seemed so good the way we had it

Back before everything became automatic

“That song came out of conversations about how easy a lot of things are these days,” Hemby recalls, “but the payoff is so much sweeter when you have to do things by hand, the hard way.”

So what can explain country music’s rising popularity in a time when all cultural indicators seem to point away from relaxing rural life and toward life-hacking efficiency? Technology has certainly eased and broadened the means of distribution, from the Opry’s livestream to artists’ Twitter accounts and songwriters’ editing software. And while it has permeated lives and changed the pace of the industry, it hasn’t fundamentally changed the message. “It’s about the stories,” Hayes explains, “and to me it’s even more than that, it’s a direct conversation even more than it’s a story.” Viewed through this lens, country is a shape-shifting genre free from form-based constraints. Hayes’ suggestion is a generous one – many country “stories” have the intellectual heft of a Bud Light commercial – but you’re likely to find deeper narratives in country than in other genres. “We all strive to write those timeless songs that don’t have anything stamped in there that dates it.”

And it’s the stories, as well as the sense of nostalgia, simplicity, and direct experience with the forces in our lives, that seem to be striking a cultural chord. The genre offers something to hold on to, an anchor in an always-on, 24-hour-news-cycle world. “It’s just harder and harder to focus with so much happening all the time,” Hemby reflects “but there’s got to be a pause button. And that’s what this music is about – taking a breath.”

Survey of salmonella species in Staten Island Zoo's snakes

For humans, Salmonella is always bad news. The bacterial pathogen causes paratyphoid fever, gastroenteritis and typhoid. But for snakes, the bacteria aren't always bad news. Certain species of Salmonella are a natural part of the snake microbial collective. However, the occasional species can cause a disease. Reptile handlers would love to know when they have a potentially problematic pathogen lurking in the midst of their snakes.

To better understand the variety of Salmonella species harbored by captive reptiles, Staten Island Zoo has teamed up with the microbiology department at Wagner College. Eden Stark, a graduate student on the project, her advisor, Christopher Corbo, and the zoo's curator and head veterinarian Marc Valitutto want to know how many Salmonella species live among the Staten Island Zoo rattlesnakes. The zoo has a long history of exhibiting one of the most comprehensive rattlesnake collections in the world, currently with 21 of 38 species on display.

So far, Stark has surveyed 26 species of snakes. "Few other institutions have undertaken such broad scale analysis of Salmonella in snakes," notes Valitutto. The research will be presented at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Annual Meeting during Experimental Biology 2015.

In particular, the investigators are on the lookout for pathogenic species of Salmonella, such as Salmonella arizonae. This species of Salmonella has been known to cause infections in snakes called osteomyelitis. It has a predilection for the bones, such as the vertebra. The bone may deform, and as the infection spreads, the deformed vertebrae may stop the snake from slithering.

The infection may be surgically removed or treated with antibiotics if it's localized and caught early enough. But if left untreated, the infection may eventually cause the snake to die.

"If we do get a snake that is positive for arizonae, we're concerned," says Valitutto. "We would not want add something like that to our collection because there's a possibility it will infect our other reptiles."

Another reason to account for the different Salmonella species is for the safety for the zookeepers. Salmonella "is strictly a pathogen for humans. It's something that anyone who handles reptiles, even people who keep them at home as pets, has to be very cautious about in handling them or anything that is part of their enclosure," says Corbo.

To categorize the Salmonella species, Stark isolated the bacteria from snake fecal samples. The feces were collected by seasoned zookeepers at Staten Island Zoo who know how to handle venomous snakes.

As expected, because snakes are natural hosts for Salmonella, Stark found a large number of Salmonella species in the fecal samples. She did find several species of Salmonella that are well-known as human pathogens, such as Salmonella typhimurium which can cause diarrhea, abdominal cramps, vomiting and nausea for about a week.

In the few cases where Stark possibly detected the snake pathogen S. arizoniae, the news was interesting to the zoo because the snakes weren't showing any symptoms evidence of disease. "It's important for keepers to know that a particular species of snake is carrying a potential pathogen so they can keep an eye on it," says Corbo.

Corbo adds that the handlers will now know that the tools they use to handle the snakes harboring S. arizonae need to be cleaned with extra care so that they don't accidentally infect other reptiles, especially snakes.

Stark is now delving further into the analysis with the polymerase chain reaction. She is testing each Salmonella species she isolates with the technique to see if the bacteria are expressing proteins known as virulence factors. This detail is important because not every potential pathogen will express virulence factors. The bacteria only become a problem if and when they turn on the expression of virulence factors and become infectious agents (for this reason, Salmonella arizonaie within snakes can even be further subdivided into more pathogenic serotypes).

"You can have a species and a subspecies of Salmonella that may not carry the specific genes to cause an infection," says Corbo. "Just because the species is there, it doesn't mean it's a pathogenic form of that species. That's why it takes a lot of screening to figure out exactly what we are seeing: Is it a true pathogen with the genes necessary to be pathogenic?"

Valitutto says the information from the analysis is critical for the zoo's biosecurity protocol. As he notes, "We don't want to send animals to other institutions that may be harboring a pathogenic strain of Salmonella."

Fantasy Novels Inspired These Soldiers to Pick Up the Pen

Fantasy books are full of epic battles like the Battle of Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings . And for most fans just reading about such battles is enough, but some fans go further, enlisting in the military in order to live out real-life adventures. One of them is Weston Ochse, a thirty-year military vet who still works with the military, traveling regularly to warzones in countries like Afghanistan. He traces his yearning for adventure back to reading The Hobbit as a child.

“That desire was definitely inculcated by the idea that one lone hobbit can make a difference,” Ochse says in Episode 143 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And if one lone hobbit can make a difference, then this poor guy from Tennessee can make a difference too. So absolutely it was inspirational.”

Ochse now draws on his military experience to write his own fantasy novels, such as the SEAL Team 666 series, which is currently in development at MGM, with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson attached to star.

Another fantasy author who is also a military vet is Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops series. As a child he was a “scrawny nerd,” and he credits fantasy novels and Dungeons & Dragons with inspiring him to become a warrior.

“Your first step to changing who you are is imagining what you want to be,” he says. “And fantasy was the thing that gave me the tools to pretend, to imagine that I could be a knight, until one day I was actually able to do it.”

Cole and Ochse both appear in Operation Arcana , a new anthology of military fantasy edited by Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy producer John Joseph Adams (read an excerpt from the anthology here). He likes the military fantasy genre because it lets authors depict the realities of military life using symbol and metaphor.

“It gives you the opportunity to place soldiers in situations where they have to figure out how to deal with the impossible,” says Adams. “Because I think that we ask soldiers to do that kind of thing on a regular basis, and so I think that one of the things that military fantasy allows you to do is literalize that and have some fun with it.”

Another favorite of both Cole and Ochse is George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire , the basis for the HBO series Game of Thrones. And though Martin isn’t a military veteran, his extensive research into medieval warfare lets him write characters that Cole and Ochse find both authentic and inspiring.

“When Rear Admiral Acton commissioned me,” says Cole, “and I raised my right hand to say the oath, in the back of my mind I was saying the words of the Night’s Watch— ‘I am the sword in the darkness, I am the watcher on the walls, I am the shield that guards the realms of men.’ I really did that, consciously, and it was sort of my nod to my nerd roots, as I assumed my mantle as a warrior in real life.”

Listen to our complete interview with Weston Ochse, Myke Cole, and John Joseph Adams in Episode 143 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Myke Cole on officers vs. grunts:

“There is far less of a division between a member of the officer class and an enlisted person now than there has ever been in the history of armed conflict, including in Tolkien’s day when he was serving. I’ll give you an example. I once did joint exercises with the Saudis, and Saudi officers are royalty, just like they were in the medieval world that Tolkien was describing. And I had a Saudi guy hand me his rucksuck and tell me to hump it, because he was an officer and they don’t carry rucksacks. And there was this moment of cultural disconnect, where I had to tell him, ‘Sorry man, you need to carry your own rucksack—I don’t care who you are—because we do things differently in America.’ But it was this incredible realization of, wow, I’m really interacting with a medieval society, for whom these things are normal. … And that’s why Aragorn was such a revolutionary character. He is this king who is willing to go out an be a ranger.”

Baen Books

Myke Cole on Naomi Novik:

“I’d like to make sure that people are acknowledging Naomi Novik, whose Temeraire series is about the Napoleanic War, told from the point of view of a former navy officer who’s now in their aerial corps, which is mounted on dragons. It is a fundamentally and foundationally military tale. … And the dragons send ripples [through society]. For example, Longwings—which are a very powerful dragon, because they can spit acid—are a key part of the British military, and a key asset to winning the war. But Longwings will only accept female captains. So now you have to let women in the military, and because the captain of a dragon is like the captain of a ship—it’s a very senior rank, the equivalent of a colonel, and it’s a gateway to the admiralty in the aerial corps—women’s status in society is completely in flux at the time of these books, and Naomi Novik deals with it brilliantly and convincingly.”

Weston Ochse on the SEAL Team 666 series:

“I heard that Dwayne Johnson, when he got the first script, it was kind of a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of a military unit, kind of a black comedy, and he turned it down, he said, ‘Absolutely not.’ He said—and I can’t believe I’m saying this with my ‘out loud’ voice—he said, ‘I want it the way Weston wrote the book,’ which is kind of awesome. But the reason I did that is because I wanted every single military person who read that to be able to acknowledge, ‘OK, this is real. This is what’s happening. And boy, isn’t it nice that rather than shooting at this enemy, we’re actually trying to puzzle out how to defeat this Chinese demon.’ … Sometimes, if it’s a lower demon, it’s just a matter of the amount of lead you can pour into them, but other times, no matter how much you fire at them, nothing’s going to happen. And a lot of times these guys have to learn on the fly what’s going to work, or they’re going to die.”

Myke Cole on his essay “What PTSD Is”:

“The Institute of Combat Stress reprinted it, and I’ve heard from a number of military doctors who are using it in recovery groups. I wish my fiction was this popular! That really resonated with people. And that was one of those blog posts that scared the crap out of me to post, because I didn’t know how people were going to react, because I’m basically turning to this huge medical establishment that has been acknowledging that this thing is a problem, and saying, ‘Yeah, you’re off base here. This is what I think is going on.’ And look, I’m not a doctor, and this is the kind of thing that needs somebody who can dedicate their life to it, but I do think it clearly resonated with people. And the basic idea is that it’s not a disease, it’s a permanent change in worldview, and it’s a small thing, but I think it’s pretty significant.”

While You Were Offline: Some One Direction Punk Just Ruined the Whole World

If the Internet taught us one thing this week it’s that it pays to think about domain registrations in advance. Also, if you say or something stupid on the Internet, everyone will be ready to tell you about it. (But if you don’t know that what are you even doing here?) In a week where the world ended for One Directioners and censorship was defeated (well, almost), here is the pick of what you might have missed happening on the wacky world wide web.

Zayn Ruins the World

What Happened: Zayn Malik has left One Direction. It’s possible that that sentence might not have made any sense to you, in which case you should read on.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: For a large part of the Internet, the biggest news story of the week was Zayn Malik leaving One Direction, a decision that he’s since explained was down to his need to regain control of his life. The resulting wave of emotion flooding the Internet was so overwhelming some news organizations sought to contextualize it for older readers, or even try to explain why social media has changed fans’ interaction with pop music as a whole. There were even YouTube supercuts made up of fans’ responses (see above).

Twitter, of course, was filled with unhappiness.

Of course, not everyone was convinced:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, mental health charities warned against some of the more dramatic social media responses. It took a day before the rest of the band started responding on social media to what had happened, and even that just seemed tragic to the fans. Short of Zayn rejoining the band, it seems difficult to imagine what will make them feel better any time soon.

The Takeaway: Will Zayn turn out to be a Robbie or a Geri? Only time will tell. Probably as much time as it takes for most of you to realize what the hell we’re talking about.

Taylor Swift Does What We Would All Do, Given The Chance

What Happened: Taylor Swift is buying up porn domains, but that doesn’t mean she’s planning on extending her conquest of the entertainment industry.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Starting June 1, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will expand the number of generic top-level domains (or gTLDs) available to the public—meaning that .com and .net will be joined by new suffixes like .sucks and .deals—and the 1989 singer is apparently already prepared for the world that’s coming. She’s already purchased taylorswift.porn and taylorswift.adult, launching a raft of excited coverage eager for the clickbait of putting the words “Taylor Swift” and “porn” in the same headline. While what she did was smart, she wasn’t unique in this kind of planning ahead; other companies are doing the same thing. Apparently, she wasn’t able to buy taylorswift.sucks, however, because it’s for sale by a source other than ICANN. She’s probably safe, though, because who really thinks that Taylor sucks these days?

The Takeaway: Someone on Taylor’s management team is thinking ahead. It’ll be interesting to see which other celebrities follow suit—and which ones will have been beaten to the punch by enterprising potential porn moguls.

Ted Cruz May Be Ready For The Highest Office In The Land, But He Clearly Wasn’t Ready For The Internet

What Happened: Republican Ted Cruz announced that he was running for president, although a quick Google search might confuse you about that “Republican” tag.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Ted Cruz, the junior US senator from Texas, announced he would be running for president in 2016 this week, but you wouldn’t know that if you visited TedCruz.com, which bears the text “Support President Obama. Immigration Reform Now!” Maybe you should visit TedCruzForAmerica.com … except that site redirects to HealthCare.gov. It turned out that Democratic supporters had registered the domains ahead of time, as well as TedCruz.ca and TedCruz.tumblr.com, much to the amusement of politicos.

It could have been worse, however; at least the other parties who owned TedCruz2016.com and TedCruz2016.org agreed to redirect traffic to Cruz’s real campaign page. Except, there was a further problem: Cruz’s real site, it turns out, wasn’t exactly optimized for security when it came to receiving donations. In fact, it shared a security certificate with a website called NigerianPrince.com, although thankfully there were those ready to reassure people that Cruz was, in fact, not Nigerian. (He was, in fact, born in Canada, which really isn’t a joke.) At this rate, it’s going to be a very long campaign season.

The Takeaway: Clearly, someone on the Cruz campaign should have taken a lesson from Taylor Swift’s team. Hey, maybe TedCruz.porn is available…?

Racism Is Alive and Well and On Entertainment News Sites, Who Knew?

What Happened: Only 30 years after the phenomenal success of The Cosby Show, television is finally waking up to the fact not everyone is white. According to one industry website, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: To the surprise of … well, everyone, probably, Hollywood news site Deadline published a story arguing white actors are having a hard time of it in TV thanks to the success of shows like Empire and Blackish. The response was instant on social media:

The non-immediate response was sizable, as well, with think pieces pointing out how offensive it was. Deadline has yet to properly respond to the criticism, although its Twitter account retweeted many negative tweets the day after the story ran.

The Takeaway: The whole thing is an impressive amount of wrong-headedness on behalf of Deadline, but it’ll be a while yet before we see if there’s any real fallout, other than people shaking their heads. If not, who knows? Bigotry to get outrage clicks might be the next big thing.

Make Those Dirty Books Clean with One Simple Censorship App

What Happened: If you’ve found yourself bothered by people writing things you don’t want to read, maybe you’d be interested in Clean Reader, an app that censors books to the satisfaction of even the most restrictive mind.* (*This is probably not true.)

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Clean Reader is an app that allows you to purchase books … and then remove all the naughty words. Unveiled earlier this month, this week it unexpectedly went viral, with authors arguing against the app and its purpose.

The charge against the app was successful. Clean Reader removed all titles from its online catalog on Friday, ahead of a planned update and relaunch that, the company claims, will “be in response to the feedback we have received from many authors and users.”

The Takeaway: We’re torn on this, to be honest. On the one hand, our anti-censorship stance had us thinking this is terrible from the get-go, but on the other hand, it’s not as if the uncensored books aren’t readily available elsewhere. Ultimately, let’s just put this in the “Unless You’re Amazingly Sensitive, What’s the Point of This?” file.

Ask A Silly Question…

What Happened: SeaWorld, in an attempt to convince the universe that it isn’t a terrible organization that hurts animals as some would have you believe, told the Internet that it would answer their questions. As you might expect, this turned out to be a bad PR move.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter

What Really Happened: Oh, SeaWorld. Considering the reputation you have, you think you’d know better than to try and repair the damage to your name by inviting questions on Twitter. And yet, apparently not. Predictably, it didn’t go well.

The Takeaway: Quite why anyone at SeaWorld would have thought this was, in any way, a good idea is beyond us, but hopefully they’ve learned their lesson.

Preview the Military Fantasy Story ‘Rules of Enchantment’

Baen Books

The below story, “Rules of Enchantment,” appears in Operation Arcana, a new anthology of military fantasy I edited. It was released March 3 by Baen Books.

‘Rules of Enchantment’

by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell

You’d think arrows are pretty silent compared to gunfire, but there’s no mistaking that bristly whistle as it whips through the air just past your head before it thwacks into someone’s Kevlar. Everyone eats dirt, and you’re checking your ammo with your back against a tree trunk wondering how the wood elves flanked you when you realize how stupid a question that is: this is their territory.

You’re new to the squad, so you’re still nervous. Every crack in the brush and shaken leaf has you jumpy. We’ve all been teasing you. Rookie this and rookie that.

I’m about fifteen feet away. I can see that your face is pale and shaken, but you have your rifle cradled and ready, looking for orders. The rest of the squad is spread out. Diaz is pulling an arrow out from his body armor and looking a bit chagrined. Orley is slowly crawling through dirt; he’s got a bead on the shooter. “Sergeant: got eyes on the woodie,” he reports.

“Hold,” I order.

This is the rendezvous point. But we’re dressed in robes that make us look like peasant travelers. I can feel Orley objecting already to the suspicion in my head, but even though our minds are all linked up into one single group mind via the Spell of Tactician’s Weave, only one of us is still in charge.

Me.

“Ditch the robes,” I order.

“Sergeant Cale . . .” Orley really doesn’t want to do this. He wants to engage.

Diaz forms up a memory. A story he was told about a couple of African-American special forces who stumbled in out of the night with bows and arrows. Scouts setting out to blend into the local land. They ended up getting shot by jumpy sentries on the way back in who thought they were orcs.

Diaz is half-black. The realization that some people see black skin, bows, and right away think orc and go straight to trigger-pulling leaves a bad taste in all our mouths.

Teachable moment about making assumptions aside—and believe me, Diaz has laid plenty of those thanks to the intimacy of the Tactician’s Weave—Orley gets Diaz’s point and eases up. Now everyone’s on board with my line of thought: that the elves are looking at us and seeing the Enemy, not US Marines.

We all shrug off the cloaks, displaying our standard Marine Corps digi-cammies and gear. My staff sergeant insignia is quite visible, making me the high-ranking target. I narrow my eyes at the shadows.

A bird whistle from the tree canopy pierces the air. They’d had us marked from the get go.

Shit.

If it wasn’t for body armor, Diaz would have been a bloody piñata. And you, rookie, would have gotten a nasty surprise from up above.

Yeah, look above your head, rookie. That grinning visage looking down the bark of the tree is a wood elf. Remember what they taught you about high ground? That includes firs. You need to be better about your situational awareness; clear up and down, not just the two dimensional plane.

But I have to smile, because the challenge-and-answer is rolling through your mind like a mantra. At least you kept calm and didn’t forget that.

“Cheshire!” I shout.

“Alice,” comes the reply, in purring tones, from the wood elf above you. Good to go.

“Hello the shooters!” I shout. “First Battalion, Ninth Marines.” You should know by now I always say something different. You should look up 1/9 and the stand at the Low Gorge Keep when we get back to the world. “You’re expecting us? We’re here for the Lady Wíela.”

The new silence stretches on for a bit. You fidget, glancing away from the wood elf crouched on the tree above you into the foliage. More of the elves’ small, childlike humanoid forms melt out from the shadows, their small bows slung on their backs, their hands resting on the hilts of knives. They are skeletal and lean, chiseled teeth glinting as they look us over with cold eyes.

“I’m Achur. I have protected the Lady this far. Do you have the writ?” The elf above you speaks again, dropping nimbly from the tree.

I hold up the papyrus, and the symbols on it glitter, then blaze as the elf’s eyes pass over them. Achur swallows, then nods. “The Lady is in your care.”

And just like that, they melt back away. All that remains is a young woman in a cloak as black as the shadows, her green eyes peeking out from under the hood.

Lady Wíela.

Diaz and Orley bow deeply toward her, as they’ve been taught by battalion S-3 and the cultural liaison gurus. I’m about to do so when your radio crackles. It’s First Squad—Stormcrow—laid out two miles farther into enemy territory. “You’ve got three trolls, Longshanks,” they report. “Headed your way like they know something’s up.”

None of us had heard anything, but we’d been focused on the attacking wood elves and could have missed the distant popcorn sound of gunfire. “Engage and slow them down, we have the package,” I say into the handset, then strain to hear their reply.

“They’re already past us, Longshanks,” First Squad reports. “Two dead. I’ve already called for a med-evac, and we might be pinned down. I’d be calling you for help if—”

A brief burst of static.

“Stormcrow?”

Nothing. Dead or moving, but it doesn’t matter to us just now.

Orley thinks he can hear the sound of wood cracking. Diaz is sure he can feel a distant thudding. I’m half convinced I can as well.

“It’s dusk,” says Lady Wíela, speaking up. “We’d better start running, unless any of your machines can hurt a troll.”

“Trolls,” you say, trying to remember your all-too-brief training before suiting up and coming through the breach.

“They’ll be weak in the daylight. We just have to make it through the night,” Lady Wíela says, as if reassuring us. Or maybe it’s herself she’s trying to convince. It’s hard to say: her face is buried deep in the shadows of her cowl. None of us find it easy to get a good look at her features.

“Right,” I say. “Get them to daylight.” But the whole squad, linked to your mind, can tell exactly what you’re thinking: that it’ll be a miracle if we all make it through the night.

Antoine taps you with a Wand of Night Seeing and we’re off, rolling through the woods at double-time. You’re on point, like a good little newbie, your rifle half raised as you scan the woods in front of us. You’ll never be a night elf—none of us can ever be that good—but the bottled spell gives you a good look at the terrain as we bust through it.

At this point, we have to figure anyone with half a lick of sense knows we’re dragging a shit ton of trouble behind us in the shape of three trolls. Anyone in front of us basically wants to get trampled, if they’re hanging around. Doesn’t stop you from jumping at every flickery shadow, though.

Plus, we can all sense you’re feeling the sting of letting that wood elf get the jump on you and you’re itching to prove yourself.

“Jotun,” I mutter to you. Be cool.

Cool as a frost giant.

The woods open up in front of you, which we all know is both good and bad; we have better visibility, but then so does anyone looking for us. And whatever advantage we had flitting between the trees where the trolls had to crash through would be lost in the more open ground. But if anything could make up for it, it was the view.

As you hustle down off the ridgeline, running along just below the crest, the trees thin out and you can see the Medju Gorge, the twisted frontier between the wood elves’ home and the land of the orcs. I’m glancing at the tortured rock formations rising up like blackened souls trying to escape Hell, each larger, more misshapen, and unnatural than the last. The gorge deepens and widens, and the formations grow more massive. Almost anything could be hiding in there, Orley thinks.

The ridge you’re running along slopes down toward the rim of the gorge, and the plan forms in our minds almost at once. Pros and cons shoot back and forth without the need for pleasantries or protocol as fast as the thoughts form. Within moments we’re moving into position for a hasty ambush.

You stop and curl back, the rest of first team following you; you have the unenviable job of bait. But you’re going to start in the beaten zone, so we think your run to safety will be short and the trolls will be distracted with other things—like stampeding off a cliff. As the ridge slopes down, the flat ground between it and the edge of the gorge narrows, and you and your team start trotting in small circles in an area where there’s only about fifty meters of flat, sparsely treed ground between the ridge’s steep slope and the gorge.

You feel them before you hear them, and hear them before you see them. The ground shakes and thuds first, the earth itself reacting to the trolls. Then you hear it—the trees cracking, metal jangling, grunting and snorting of the biggest, dumbest animals on two legs. Trees wave and topple, and then they lumber into view, massive arms and legs swinging through the foliage, then huge bodies tearing through. Your mind has a hard time with it, even through the unreal vision of Night Seeing. Videos from the first Rangers through the breach was one thing—gunsight cameras another—but this almost burns out your brain.

Good thing we’re here too. Other than coordination, this is the thing Tactician’s Weave is good for. We push you through the initial shock. As one your team raises their weapons and fires. You’re not trying to bring down the trolls—only enrage them, draw them right into the beaten zone.

It works, of course. They’re big dumb animals. But we all notice just how ineffective your fire is, and the plan starts to make less sense. Still, we’re committed.

“This is a bad idea,” Lady Wíela hisses just as you and your team start to move, spraying three-round bursts back at the lumbering beasts.

“Yep, we know,” I say and bring my rifle up. There’s a HEDP—High Explosive, Dual Purpose—grenade in the tube slung under the barrel, and I’m hoping it does the trick.

“You won’t get me back to your world this way,” Lady Wíela says.

“We won’t get you anywhere if we don’t try to shake these assholes.”

They cross the line, and whatever else she might be saying is drowned in a cacophony of fire. Our three automatic weapons open up, concentrating on the closest troll. Actual night-vision goggles help us, but they’re not as good as the spell you’re under. We see greenish lumps, fragments of huge bodies, and the bright, actinic sparks of tracer rounds seeking them out and pinging off their impossibly thick hides.

One staggers into view and I take the shot, angling up my rifle and popping off the grenade. The rifle butt smacks me in the shoulder, and I admire the shot for a moment—just like they say you shouldn’t—but it’s a perfect arc and nails the troll in its squat neck.

We all admire it, and then we scatter like camouflage cockroaches when the light turns on.

The trolls wig out, big time. The one I hit, he finally breaks and does a runner right toward the gorge. The other two start flailing around, maddened, completely lost. While that’s great for us trying to boogie out, it’s shit for us trying to do so in one piece. Tree limbs and rocks and clods of dirt the size of your chest start flying through the air. Marcel gets hit by a shattered tree trunk and goes down, run through with a couple of big shards of bole wood.

You grab him by the drag strap on the back of his vest and start to move through the woods. You might have been one of the biggest Tolkien nerds in your boot-camp platoon, but you were also one of the strongest.

We like you like that.

“Leave him,” Wíela hisses as we try to regroup. She’s stayed by my side through the ambush. “He will only slow us down, and the trolls’ madness will pass. They will hunt us again.”

“We do not leave a Marine behind!”

“You jeopardize this mission!” she cries. “And the whole war besides! Your people have stopped the invasion into your world, but you are barely keeping your enemies from staying on this side. I am the key to the alliance your forces need.”

There is no denying that we’ve been stuck in a morass ever since pushing through to the other side, and you know it as well as any of us. You watched it on TV, on the Internet, through shaky YouTube videos and live Tweets. When the rifts opened, we didn’t even know it was happening. At first, it was just tiny pockets where two worlds touched. But they grew wider, reaching beyond the woods and back alleys and caves where they first appeared. And just as we started to investigate, they poured out.

You wouldn’t think—no one thought—that a bunch of creatures out of the storybooks could stand up for long against cops, much less the Army or Marines, but they made a fight out of it the world will never forget. Or maybe the world will, given enough time. Maybe it will fade to legends and fairytales and great big hairy operas by the descendants of the Germans. One thing’s for sure: everyone started looking at those old stories differently when orcs started beheading joggers in Central Park and trolls destroyed the Empire State Building.

When we stopped the invasion and pushed through the fissures, we allied quickly with beings like the wood elves and humans like Lady Wíela, who were our allies and friends in the old stories.

Which is why we were on the edge of the wood elves’ territory, running from trolls.

“We know what’s at stake,” I tell her. “We know you have information the brass is hot and heavy for.” She seems to be some sort of royalty on this side of the rift, and we’re the anonymous security team delivering her to the safe location.

We know our role.

We don’t stop moving, trying to form back up as we leave the thrashing noise of the trolls behind us. We take advantage of the bond that Tactician’s Weave brings us and keep moving generally toward the objective.

“You don’t know what’s really at stake,” she says, her voice rising in pitch and volume. “You haven’t the first idea.”

“You could just tell us,” Orley says, interrupting.

“I can only speak to your leaders. And if you knew why, you would know we have no time to drag around the dying.”

It’s clear she’s not going to tell us peons anything. “He’s not dying; he’ll be fine if we get him to a surgeon soon.” We figure she has no idea that people could actually recover from wounds like that, much less survive them, without some intense magic. But still, the charitable understanding is hard to come by.

“We will all die if we do not get to safety and soon.”

I smile as you come across a deep draw cutting across our path that drains down into the ravine. “We’ll get there,” I say.

You pick your way down the near slope of the gully, checking left and right like a good newbie should. You’re rattled from that first encounter with the trolls, but you’re also taking pride in having survived it, and having had the presence of mind all on your own to grab Marcel and drag him out of the killzone. Heath and Lomicka are carrying him now, groaning on one of our collapsible litters. They’ll have a tough time getting down and back up the other side, but they can see your steps, your route, and pick their own way down from what they’ve seen through your eyes.

The sounds of the trolls still behind us somewhere spooks you, and you nearly squeeze off a round in panic. But we steady you again, remind you we want the trolls to follow us, and you press on. You pick your way across the gully floor slowly, eyeing the sharp rise on the far side. Lady Wíela has graciously informed us of a dry streambed that rises more gradually out the other side, and you pick up her landmarks and start moving toward them. The direction takes you down and west, closer toward that nightmare rift, where the draw empties out. Some of us think we can hear shrieks … or maybe it’s just the wind whistling over those rock formations.

“Fuckin’ eerie,” Ysbarra mutters. She spits at the ground and hefts her SAW, taking comfort in the cold metal of the light machine gun in her hands.

This could, really, be anywhere on Earth. Back home. Back in the world. The same sorts of weeds and scrub poke up through the same sorts of rocks. The air, we all think, smells a little sweeter in the forest we just came from, and a little fouler up ahead where we don’t want to go.

So as long as there aren’t any invisible caves, or crystal staircases, or anything else weird, we should be good to go for the next attempt at an ambush. It’s not that we want to stop and fight the trolls, it’s that we don’t have much choice. From here it’s a straight shot back to our bivouac, and little else but open ground between us and the relative safety of the Forward Operating Base. Either the trolls run us down in the open ground, or we drag them all the way back to the FOB with us and hope the Marines there are up to the task.

It’s a bullshit buffet, and we’ve got to pick something to eat.

“Wish we had a couple Gamgees with us,” I mutter.

“What?” Lady Wíela asks.

“SAMs,” I explain, realizing she isn’t following. “Surface to Air Missiles.”

But she’s no less mystified.

“Think they’d stop a troll?” you ask.

I shrug. “Couldn’t hurt…”

We follow you down, keeping up our dispersion, all of us trying to ignore the thudding in the distance. The trolls have gotten their shit together and could well be on our trail again. The sound of them certainly isn’t growing any fainter.

The good Lady is chirping at my shoulder about moving faster, but she answers the questions I put to her, however reluctantly. She sees the wisdom in our plan, however far short of ideal it may be, but she is not happy about it, and her nervousness grows with the sound of the trolls.

You set up in overwatch once you reach a shallow enough part of the streambed, scrambling up the side and back toward the steep edge of the gully. You perch on top just as the litter bearers make it down the far slope with Marcel between them. Sighting through the scope on your rifle, the landscape is laid out, the trees thinning to nothing on the opposite side, and treetops swaying as the trolls plod through.

We start setting up while we watch through your eyes, measuring distance and time and need. It’s easier this time, picking out their flailing limbs and misshapen bodies, the thinning of the forest giving you more space to see. Still, the fully glimpsed form of them is just as terrifying as the half-glimpsed pieces.

“Damn,” you mutter.

They are almost as broad as they are tall, but not fat as such—just thick. Squat necks with lumpy heads atop them, huge swaying arms that brush the ground as they lope along. Their hands are barely hands at all, almost just clubs on the ends of their arms. But it’s not like they need much more than that.

You can only see two, which gives you hope that one of them did, indeed, panic himself right off a cliff. We’re preparing for three anyway, not that it makes much difference: more than one stretches our resources to the breaking point. We have six kilos of C4, two collapsible anti-tank rockets, a dozen or so grenades, and a dwindling supply of regular ol’ bullets. We arrange things as best we can, and once again dangle some bait for them.

This time, Lady Wíela herself volunteers. I tell her no, but she is insistent. We’d hate to do all this just to lose her, but she won’t be put off. “You have the weapons,” she points out. “If any of you steps away from your post, you reduce our fighting power. I’m your best option.”

She’s right. And if the trolls don’t bite, we’re fucked either way. We’ve been calling for backup—air support, or advice from up the food chain. But there’s static in the air. Errant spells. Energy from the rift. Who knows? We seem to be on our own.

So we set up and there is no mistaking it now; the ground is shaking, the trees are swaying and there is no chance that it’s a column of tanks rolling through to pick us up—they’re still having problems stockpiling enough diesel on this side of the rifts to make it work.

We hustle to improvise some claymores and set up Brust and Antoine on the opposite side of the dry streambed from you with their anti-tank rockets.

Lady Wíela paces through a small section of cleared ground in the middle of the gully. You keep looking from her to the treeline and back again, feeling personally responsible for her safety even though we’ve taken that on as a squad. You still haven’t worked out that team-mind thing, but we know you will; we all had to work at it at one point or another.

A lot of fantasy nerds got it in their heads that they were the next Aragorn—the movie Aragorn, no less—hacking their way through legions of orcs with a big fucking sword and a bad shave. Lotta assholes got killed that way, in and out of uniform. You’re not one of those assholes. You’re a solid part of the team. You’ve been through the training, paid some dues. Now it’s time to see how it really gets done on the ground.

So you don’t let yourself linger on the Lady, however good she looks in that gown-and-cloak number. No Cate Blanchett, but still easy on the eyes. Besides, when your brain wanders like that you can feel Ysbarra’s annoyance at the off-mission male-gaze focus like a swift ruler crack to the knuckles. Save that shit for your bunk.

And when the trolls break through, you’re all business. You estimate the ranges and we read them right off the top of your consciousness. Too close. Far too close.

“Lady Wíela!” you shout, and the Lady looks at your pointed hand. They’re at the crest, near where we came down, towering above.

She screams, getting their attention, and starts to run.

We make a decision and Brust pulls the trigger. An unguided rocket lances out in a tight spiral. It blossoms orange just under the armpit of one of the trolls, causing it to bellow in rage.

“He ain’t too fucking happy about that,” I say.

From what Brust can see, we’re thinking we seem to have finally injured one of them—slightly.

“Nah,” you report. “I think we just really, really pissed it off.”

It bellows again, and an answering roar comes from down toward the ravine. Fuck, I think, spreading alarm out through everyone.

We scope the end of the gully and see the big dark shape of the third troll lumbering up the gully toward us. It must have gone down into the ravine but continued to follow us and climbed up to try to flank. We would not have given them that much credit for coordination, and maybe it was just a happy accident (for them). “Who cares if it’s an accident,” Antoine hisses. “We are supremely fucked.”

And the Lady is close to being trapped. “Reel her up,” I order. We’re not going to lose her.

You grab the 550-pound test-cord loop from your gear and fling it over the edge of the gully after tying off one end to your vest. If she can get to that, she can climb up, maybe, and you’re torn between firing at the trolls to drive them off and trying to make like a bump in the grass, hoping they get more excited about Brust and his spent rocket launcher.

We solve it for you when Antoine fires on the other troll, hoping to draw them away. But no matter what we do, we’ve got more trolls than we can deal with and a lot of open ground behind us.

Antoine’s distraction works, though that means all three trolls are now keying on Brust and Antoine. They are theoretically out of reach on the lip of the gully, but suddenly the walls don’t look so high.

And then the radio crackles. Fuzzy and fractured, but recognizable.

“Longshanks, Longshanks, this is Windlord, we are one mike out from your beacon, what’s your sitch?”

We somehow refrain from cheering.

“Windlord, this is Longshanks actual,” I shout into the radio handset. “Three brutes, danger close, bring the thunder!”

“Thunder, aye. Hold on to your butts, Longshanks. Windlord out.”

You look up and to the west, and you can see them, a flight of four sparks in the distance, but closing, growing quickly. You scramble to the lip of the gully and shout down at the Lady. She hurries toward you, broken from her fear, and starts scrambling toward the dangling cord. She finds it and loops it under her arms, tying it off in front of her. Then she starts to climb, and you take up the slack, taking weight off of her.

“What is it?” she shouts, seeing that I’m looking over my shoulder into the air.

“A dragon?”

“Even better,” I shout down at her. “Warthogs!”

She frowns—not sure how a pig might be able to save our bacon right now—as the Warthogs arrive.

They’re ugly and beautiful-almost-ancient jets made for a different war. Their huge rotary cannons, mounted under the cockpit, were designed to plow 30mm depleted-uranium rounds into Soviet tanks and armored vehicles in support of ground troops like us. The planes themselves are actually armored, and as they dive on the gully you can see the cluster bombs and anti-armor rockets slung under the wings.

The trolls look up just as four gouts of flame erupt from the planes, each stream of phosphorescent rounds looking like a laser beam. Two of the Warthogs loose rockets, and explosions rock the gully. We all drop flat, and you’re thrown down, back as you come to an appreciation of what “danger close” really means. The heat of the explosions washes over you, singeing the grass, reddening your exposed skin, and the weight on the line goes heavy.

The trolls bellow and cry and scream, and it all mingles with the cacophony of the Warthogs’ attack. They seem to be stampeding to the ravine, to the frontier with the dark lands, and two of the Warthogs overfly them while the other two circle back around and strafe them again to make the point. One of the trolls actually falls and does not stir.

“Fuck yeah!” someone says. Or maybe we all do. Hard to tell.

You grab hold and start hauling on the line again. Lady Wíela is still on it, but heavy, not assisting you. Fantasy nerds who’d been through boot camp knew that their gaming stats had real world counterparts, and you went in big on your Strength and Constitution. Hand over hand you pull her up the side of the gully.

We all pick ourselves up, several limps and cuts and bruises, but nothing to keep us from hoofing the last few miles. We hurry over to where you are, where you’re pulling the Lady Wíela up over the lip of the gully.

I’m hoping she’s not dead. Really, really hoping. But you see her as you drag her over the lip and relax slightly. She’s unconscious, blood down the side of her face, but she takes several deep breaths as we watch. Antoine gets down to check her out and pronounces her alive, but he’s muttering, “This ain’t right,” over and over again.

We all take in the state of her cloak and gown, torn and shredded by the trip up the rocky wall of the gully. Her skin is gray and mottled beneath, no match for the pale face and blond hair showing above her shoulders.

Not human.

Her face and hands are a glamour, I realize. A magical disguise meant to fool us.

Or someone.

Orley draws his sidearm, ready to put two between her eyes, but you grab his wrist and push the weapon back.

We see it clear in your mind. Diaz’s story about the two black Special Forces guys riddled with bullets because the sentries had mistaken them for orcs. The lady’s disguise was not going to survive a trip to Washington, so she knew she would be unmasked long before she got anywhere the surprise might do her any good.

“She’s an orc, but she’s here to help us,” you say aloud. “I don’t think she dangled herself out there as troll bait for nothing. She’s a friendly. And, I’m guessing, an important one.”

After a moment, Diaz nods and grabs the second collapsible litter off of Antoine’s back and unfolds it. We get Wíela on it, and, as the Warthogs make one final strafing run along the gully, we start hoofing it for friendlier territory.

Forward Operating Base Hammerhand sits perched on a bare sweep of rocky soil, just on the frontier of the High Elves’ sacred forest. Dawn breaks as the big Osh-Kosh truck crawls up from the Entry Control Point down on the plain proper. As we crest the rise, we can see the Seven Sisters Falls, sparkling in the morning sun, pouring out from the sacred forest and into the river we all call “Binky” because none of us can pronounce its real name.

As soon as we’re stopped, Antoine hauls Marcel off the back of the truck and two more corpsmen come running up. Together, they all hustle off to the Combat Support Hospital. An aircrew and some officer, meanwhile, come fetch Lady Wíela. The officer, at least, doesn’t look surprised at the mottled gray skin showing under her torn clothing.

“Fucking figures,” you say. And for once, we don’t give you a hard time. That’s hard-won knowledge—the fact that sometimes you’re a mushroom: kept in the dark and fed orders.

Tactician’s Weave is wearing off and we’re all starting to fall back into our own heads, but we don’t really need it to make some decisions together. Dropping off the back of the truck we haul our weary bodies out to the eastern end of the FOB, looking out over the forest and falls and the faint hint of golden spires away over the forest canopy.

We shuck our gear, bodies steaming with sweat evaporating in the cool morning air. As we settle in, the CH-53 Sea Stallion lifts off its pad at the western end of the base and forms up with two Cobra gunships already orbiting the base. They leg it north at top speed, and we wish them luck. Flying through the rifts is nowhere near as easy as walking or driving.

“It ain’t D&D rules, that’s for sure,” you say, leaning back on your gear. Like some salty vet, you’ve already broken down your M-16 and gotten out your cleaning kit, the pieces settled on your lap. We’re all following suit, of course, even those of us who didn’t get off a shot.

“Yeah,” Orley says, stretching his back, “I wish I could ignore encumbrance.”

We all laugh. We’re all nerds of some stripe or another, and most of us rolled those dice before taking the chances we do now. But reality’s not as simple as those worlds we conceived. All of those guys did tap into something real, as it turns out, some ancient memories of the world when those rifts opened and the weird and scary and monstrous poured out, populating our nightmares and fairy tales for millennia.

“So did those elves sell us out?” Ysbarra asks, leaning over her SAW to disassemble the light machine gun.

“What do you think?” Diaz replies. “Those trolls were aimed right at us. They delivered their package, got paid, and then got paid for telling the other side where the package was.”

“That’s jacked up,” you say. You’re still too boot to say “fuck” sometimes.

“It’s fucking complicated,” I say. “Just like the ‘Stan, just like Iraq. I was in both places. I saw how fucked up it could be, even back there. No surprise it’s the same here.”

You look over the sacred forest, the lands of our allies, frowning a little. We can read the thought on your face, don’t need to see into your mind.

“And no—no guarantees they can be trusted, either,” I say. “But if we trust each other and think things through, we’ll be alright.”

That’s how it’s been done through all the long years, you figure, since trolls and goblins first walked out of our nightmares, and the many wars since. If we hold off the darkness together, that’s how it’ll go this time, too. Maybe this time we won’t forget it all to legend.