She waited in the darkness. A bit of time pa.s.sed before she heard humming sounds that resolved into voices that still carried an odd high pitched hum beneath their words as they grew closer and less m.u.f.fled.

"Just look at it, it's twice the size of the others," a worried voice said.

Someone else hummed in reply.

"I don't think it's safe to keep it here," continued the first voice.

Another voice replied, "It sparkles just like the others though, maybe it's just special?"

A third voice, possibly the hummer, declared, "Let's ask the pod elders."

Danika listened intently, but nothing else was said; the humming voiced people seemed to have departed. She watched her bug report for any reply while she waited. After a while, she logged out, and disconnected herself from the VR-medi pod.

She pulled herself over the edge, and wondered what she should do with her evening. After a few minutes she loaded the game on her phone, to see if she was trapped in darkness through that interface as well.

It was the same, all her menus showed, but there was nothing but a black screen beyond them. She opened her bug report and added that the problem existed in the mobile interface as well. A moment later she received a reply.

It read: "From the honorable celestial servant of the seventh cla.s.s, Lin Hao, first among his rank, serving the Jade Emperor in the maintenance of the Living Jade Empire: Working on it."

Danika hesitated a moment, and then replied: "Thanks."

She had water boiling before she received another reply: "From the honorable celestial servant of the seventh cla.s.s, Lin Hao, first among his rank, serving the Jade Emperor in the maintenance of the Living Jade Empire: np."

Danika read the common abbreviation of "no problem" and laughed at the contrast between the lengths of t.i.tle and the content. She decided to leave the game open, and browsed job possibilities for the following morning on her other screen.

She was startled when her phone started emitting music of some high pitched woodwind variety. A dialog popped up explaining, "You hear a faint lullaby." She rolled her eyes and turned down the volume until it actually was faint.

Danika found a leveling job available that she s.n.a.t.c.hed up with amus.e.m.e.nt. Someone was paying quite a bit to have one of the old alt accounts that she'd sold max leveled. They were probably going to submit it to "Living Jade Empire" since they had no other stipulations. Since she was quite familiar with both the game and the account, it would be easy, though time consuming work.

She went ahead and started on it while she waited for "Living Jade Empire" tech support to resolve whatever had gone wrong. After she'd been leveling for awhile, she noticed that a dialog had popped up on her phone. She scrolled back up a little and caught up:

"You hear a humming beneath the lullaby."

Voice: "Shh, try to move it quietly."

Voice B: "I thought they decided to keep it for now."

Voice: "They don't know what it is either, and the safety of the rest is my responsibility."

Voice B: "What are you going to tell them when they ask where it is later? That it flew away?"

Voice: "They're so old they've probably already forgotten I told them about it. Anyway, it's not like we're destroying it, we're just moving it."

Voice C: "That's one way of putting it."

The dialog ended. Danika considered it while she leveled her old character, leaving her phone propped up against the screen in front of her.

Something was being stolen, she decided. Something that sparkled… and was large enough to make moving it silently difficult. And it was potentially dangerous. After thinking for awhile, she decided that she didn't have either enough clues or enough context.

Awhile later another message arrived from the honorable Lin Hao. It was much longer than the previous ones, and Danika paused the older game and read it hopefully: "From the honorable celestial servant of the seventh cla.s.s, Lin Hao, first among his rank, serving the Jade Emperor in the maintenance of the Living Jade Empire: I think I've created a better visual representation of what it should be like inside your egg. I've changed the display for all future eggs as well. It wasn't really a bug, but I can easily understand your confusion. You're actually the first person to hatch in the Living Jade Empire! I have granted you a token. Congratulations, and good luck in your hatching! P.S. If you're still playing through the mobile interface you'll need to restart the game."

Danika stared blankly at the message. Her egg. Suddenly she remembered the warning from "The First Dwarven Smith" about literally starting life as a child. She quickly restarted the game.

A curved wall appeared in front of her, no matter how she spun, it was the same, except for the lighting. Below it was darker, and in one area it was lighter and sort of glowed softly like something was s.h.i.+ning behind it.

She tapped her inventory ring, which displayed in one corner from the phone. A message popped up: "Storage cannot be accessed at this time." She frowned at it. She hadn't tried accessing it when everything had been dark, so she didn't know if it had been inaccessible since she left the beginner's vale or not.

Danika sat and gazed at the inside of her own eggsh.e.l.l for a bit. Nothing detectible seemed to be happening, so she placed it against her other screen edge again, and resumed leveling the old account until it reached a good quitting spot.

In some much older games it had actually been pretty common for dragon hatchlings to have a few levels, and skills learned while still in the egg, but Danika wondered if she'd still have her storage ring when she hatched. It would suck to have spent so much time killing slimes to expand her inventory only to have it vanish.

When Danika finished the old game's current quest, she heaved herself back into the VR-medi pod and hooked up the interface. She knew that she ought to sleep instead of playing more, but she was too curious.

Her egg was more detailed seen this way. It was actually very slightly translucent. Danika could see shadows move across it now and then. She tried scratching it, but other than a faint noise, her claw didn't seem to have any effect. Apparently her eggsh.e.l.l was quite st.u.r.dy. She wondered if she ought to use her wind slash to try to hatch herself, or if she was supposed to wait.

A large shadow darkened her whole egg suddenly, and a new voice asked doubtfully, "What kind of egg is it? It looks like it's just a small chicken egg covered in pixie dust."

One of the sort of humming voices from before replied quickly, "It's perfectly clean, I a.s.sure you. We don't know what kind of egg it is, that's why we thought it would interest you. If you don't want it, I'm sure we can sell it to an enchanter or a rare animal collector."

Danika's egg was lifted and she was bounced around inside it. It was her! She was what had been stolen!