Dungeon Exploiter

The best-paying contract of our lives had my name on it, and that's exactly why Joe wanted to burn it.

We argued for two days.

Joe's position: gigs don't do names, so somebody built this one for us, so no.

Rob's position: priority Grade-B pays triple, so yes, and also he'd already accepted it from my account.

So, Wednesday, we stood in front of a Grade-B door on the government side of Sector 9. The door was frosted glass. Stenciled on it, in the font that means a building owns you:

PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER.

Inside was a room.

Not a dungeon. A room. Chairs in rows, bolted down. A counter at the far end with a frosted window. Carpet the color of waiting.

A machine by the door printed a ticket the moment Joe crossed the threshold. It printed one for Rob. For Tim. For Kayla.

Mine didn't print.

I'd stopped at the line, reading the doorframe. The intake terms were etched right there, small. Entry constitutes consent to queue. I hadn't entered yet.

So I entered sideways, through the fire door, which had different terms.

Little things.

welcome.

NOW SERVING: 47

your number: 8,203

estimated wait: [ESTIMATE UNAVAILABLE]

thank you for your patience. it nourishes.

"It nourishes," Kayla read. "Great. Love that."

The room was full. That's the part that took a minute to land.

Rows and rows of them. Raiders in patched gear. A courier still holding his package. Office workers. A knight in half-plate, helmet in his lap, ticket in his gauntlet, sitting with the perfect posture of a man who's been polite for a very long time.

Some of them had dust on them.

Some of them were skeletons.

Skeleton, ticket still in hand, number faced neatly toward the counter. Nobody had moved it. Moving it felt illegal in a way I can't explain.

"NOW SERVING: 47," Joe read. "What number do the — what number did they have?"

The knight answered without turning. "Friend, I've been here since the counter said forty-seven."

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"When did it say forty-six?"

The knight thought about it. His armor creaked.

"No," he said finally. "It's always been forty-seven."

Hold music played from everywhere and nowhere. Four bars, then the same four bars. Kayla started humming harmony on the second hour, which is how you know a mind is fighting for its life.

Our buffs began politely expiring. Nothing dramatic. The room just cost you, slowly, the way carpet costs you. Tim's blessing from his mom's church ticked down like a parking meter.

Rob lasted ninety minutes before he found the market.

Of course there's a market. Desperate people in fixed positions — Rob looked around the way a fisherman looks at a stocked pond. He started quiet negotiations three rows back. Buying low numbers off the hopeless. Selling to the frantic.

"I'm PROVIDING LIQUIDITY," he hissed when Joe stared.

And Gobi took a ticket.

We told him not to. We told him twice. But the machine had a little dish of lollipops under it, and the sign said FOR QUEUING CUSTOMERS, and Gobi did the math that Gobi does.

your number: 8,204

dependent status: noted.

jurisdiction: ATTACHED.

He came back proud. One lollipop. One legally binding queue position.

"Gobi waited SO WELL already," he said.

Around hour two, I read the floor.

Carpet wears where people walk. It's the most honest record in any building. This carpet had deep gray paths along every row, worn to the backing at the ticket machine, worn glossy by the restrooms.

And between the front row and the counter: nothing.

Untouched. Factory pile, springy as sod. Ten meters of carpet that no human foot had crossed in the life of the building.

Eight thousand people, and nobody had ever walked to the window.

I filed that where I file things, next to a growing list of questions about what the window was for.

The knight noticed me noticing. "The carpet," he said. "Yes. I've had a long time to look at it."

"And?"

"And I decided it meant the queue must be very strict." He was quiet a moment. "That was easier than the other thing it could mean."

Kayla found the pattern around hour three. She'd been watching the counter — you always watch the number that isn't moving.

"Guys. The window's frosted, but there's a light in there. It hasn't changed. No shadow's crossed it since we sat down."

Nobody was behind the counter.

Maybe nobody had ever been behind the counter.

The counter wasn't slow. The counter was decorative. NOW SERVING 47 wasn't a place in line. It was wallpaper. The queue didn't lead anywhere.

The queue was the dungeon.

The waiting was the monster.

"So what's the play?" Kayla said. "How do we beat a line?"

I stood up.

Everyone in the room flinched. Eight thousand people felt someone leave a queue, all at once, the way you feel an elevator drop.

"Jon," Joe said carefully, "you'll lose your place."

"I don't have a place." I held up my empty hands. No ticket. "I never took a number. Check the terms on your stubs — jurisdiction attaches at consent to queue. I came in the fire door."

"So?"

"So the room has no hold on me. I can just... walk up there."

The knight's helmet turned. Slowly. The whole front row turned with it, dust sifting off shoulders, a hundred faces with one expression.

Not anger. Not even envy.

Fear. For me. The specific fear of watching a man break a rule that has always been enforced by something.

I walked toward the counter.

The hold music stopped mid-bar.

From the walls — from inside the walls — came a sound like a hundred seatbelts unbuckling at once. The velvet ropes along every aisle went taut. The retractable belt barriers, the little chrome-post ones, the ones in every queue in every building in the world, pulled themselves out of the floor.

They stood up like snakes.

QUEUE INTEGRITY EVENT.

security has been notified.

security has always been notified.

"Oh good," said Rob, from underneath his portfolio of tickets. "Stanchions."