"I really wish you hadn't said that," Dave gave Suzie an unhappy look. She had a bad feeling about the entire game now.
Already female and dressed up like some sort of go-go dancer from an Austin Powers movie Dave's avatar had warped and distended into its current fecund condition without the benefit of her clothes changing to match it. What had formerly been an unusual avatar had become dowright embarassing. The computer generated NPCs ignored her as if she were normal, but two player characters wandered by, a man in a business suit with blue skin and electricity for hair and ogre dressed as if it were headed for the Summer of Love, and both gave her a confused look. The ogre looked like he was about to say something, but Dave suddenly felt somehow less substantial and noticed she was starting to fade away. The ogre nodded his head and kept going.
"What's happening now?" Dave wailed.
Suzie made a grab for her transformed friend, but her hand passed straight through Dave's arm. Fighting panic she spat out a hurried sentence as Dave began to lose all detail and density.
"The other player! I bet he got you after leveling up! He's Summoning you! Use you MAP! Go back home! You can't be Summoned from your homebase!"
Dave caught about half of what Suzie was saying. For a second she ignored Suze and vainly tried to log off one more time. She still got the hourglass icon and wasted precious seconds. Struggling to remember how to bring up the interface Dave finally managed to pull up her location and stats, but the damage was done.
Multifunctional Application Platform*
Location: In Transit
HP: +10
MP: +5
Level: 2
Friends: Suzie, Conrad
Home: 22034 Easterling Heights
Dave cursed in frustration. Her home link had already been changed and she couldn't reset it to the default. And who the hell was Conrad? Dave felt sick to her stomach and not just because she was lugging around nearly three trimesters worth of baby. Apparently, pregnancy had its perks. She had leveled up and gotten a stat boost. What made her shake with fear as she began to fade back into the game in a new location, one that her Map indicated was on the other side of the city from Suzie, was the knowledge she was trapped, an NPC character in someone else's game. Probably this Conrad person's game, possibly her husband, maybe just her baby daddy, but whoever he was, Dave's Map idicated he was in the next room.
