The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale
Copyright (c) 2001 Benjamin Rosenbaum. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 2001. Licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Approx. 6,894 words.
ist's computer on the fifth floor and played them at night, hiding from the security guards. He popped down to visit Vampire a lot, and avoided Pringles and his office entirely.
"I'm on level 5," he said, "and I just can't get past the Roach."
"And you've still got the magic sword?" said Vampire, not looking up.
"No, I lost that to the Troll."
"You don't even have to go to the Troll," said Vampire, who never played video games but read the video game newsgroups religiously. "You can cross the Dread Bridge instead."
"I always die on the Dread Bridge when it breaks in two."
"You're not running fast enough," said Vampire. You've got to run as fast as you can, and jump at the last moment."
"It's tough," said Stan.
Vampire shrugged.
"How are things with you?" Stan asked.
"The patch for mod-ssl 1.2.4.2 is totally incompatible with the recommended build sequence for Apache on Solaris. Solaris is such crap."
"Oh," said Stan. "OK."
"He
