Frankly, deathmatch had begun to lose its luster until CyberStorm released the custom map editor. Since then, a score of popular custom maps had appeared in the deathmatch server listing. Most of these maps were the out-of-control Rambo fantasies of fourteen-year-old boys, with ridiculous numbers of mounted machine guns and no logic in the placement and design of fortifications. Gragg knew he could do much better, but he didn't have the inclination to learn the scripting language used to create the maps-no money in it.

So it was with low expectations that Gragg downloaded a new custom map named Monte Cassino. The reasonably historic name was unusual, since the fourteen-year-old crowd usually named maps something like "Fuckmeister Shitfest."

Gragg quickly found a server named Houston Central running the Monte Cassino map. Since it was geographically local, it gave him a killer ping of twenty milliseconds, and he joined the deathmatch already under way.

The moment the map loaded, he noticed differences from other custom maps. First off, he wasn't even allowed to join the Axis team. The map permitted Internet team play only for the Allied forces. The Germans were bots. It was humans against the AI, which irked Gragg because he loved playing the German side-they were the villains, after all.

Likewise, respawning was different in this map. It wasn't a straight team match, where you respawned elsewhere after dying. Instead it was described as an «objective» map, where you stayed dead until the last member of your team died or until you defeated all the Germans-at which point the map reset and everyone was alive again.

Also, this map had radically different terrain and textures-as though it was all done from scratch. The map consisted of a steep mountain topped by the ruins of a large Benedictine monastery. The scenario description said U.S. heavy bombers had struck the monastery. The resulting ruins turned out to be a maze of shattered walls, charred wooden beams, and entrances to cellars. It provided excellent cover for the Germans, and the designer placed MG42s with interlocking fields of fire along the approaches to the hilltop. The Germans also had light mortars to kill you if you hid behind boulders. It was as if they'd «registered» the coordinates of all the good cover in advance-which was something the Germans might actually do. As a result, Gragg was determined to beat it.

It was quickly apparent that a pack of lone gunmen could not take the monastery. It required an orchestrated attack. It took an hour of goading other teammates using the chat window, but Gragg finally convinced them to coordinate their attack-instead of running hell-bent for leather up the hill. With some experimentation, they soon discovered that half the squad could draw fire from the Krauts while the other half of the force outflanked them on the left, using the steeper incline for cover. If they ran, they'd be spotted and cut down, but if they crawled on their bellies, they could usually get to within grenade-tossing distance of the outer fortifications. Once the grenades exploded, they'd charge into the ruins and the rest of the battle would be room-to-room fighting.

By this time, the squad distracting the Germans would be mostly dead from mortar rounds and heavy machine guns, so they couldn't contribute much. It was a tough slog, and Gragg was still at it two days later. He hadn't slept and had eaten very little, but he would not disconnect from the Houston Monte Cassino server without beating this map. The closest he'd come had been yesterday, when he made it into the wine cellars. There, an SS officer shot him in the back after Gragg raced past a row of wine tuns.

This was what had driven Gragg for the last twenty-four hours straight: After shooting him, the SS officer stood over his body. It was the infamous Oberstleutnant Heinrich Boerner from the single-player mode of OTR.Even freakier, Boerner spoke over Gragg's body. He said: " Tod ist unvermeidlich, aber meist unbeutend," with an English subtitle appearing on the bottom of the screen: "Death is inevitable but largely unimportant."

How the fuck had they done that? It was absolutely the same voice-over artist for Boerner from the original single-player game.

Had this custom map been done by the CyberStorm folks themselves? Gragg was obsessed with reaching the wine cellars again. He had to find out what Boerner was doing there. Only this time he wasn't going to let that fuck shoot him in the back. Yet he knew only too well that Boerner was a slippery character-not likely to repeat his tactics. Gragg resolved to save grenades for the cellars.

The next round started with much of the usual crew-similarly obsessed folks, cursing this addictive game and striving to take the abbey before dawn broke on another sleepy-eyed workday. This time Gragg made sure to follow in the path of a player whose screen name was Major Pain in the Ass. MPITA was a good player, with quick reflexes and a good grasp of key combinations for jumping, switching weapons, and leaning around corners. Gragg crawled behind him during the flanking maneuver, then stuck close on his tail going into the monastery ruins. He never let him get more than a step or two ahead. MPITA soaked up most of the gunfire from Krauts with Schmeissers and heavy machine guns. By the time MPITA was taken out with a Panzerfaust, Gragg was farther into the ruins than he'd ever gotten without taking serious damage.

He took out the Panzerfaust team with a couple blasts from his pump shotgun-his weapon of choice for this map. A sniper rifle was useless in the close quarters of the ruins.

Gragg then stormed forward, hitting a command key that caused his avatar to shout, "Follow me!" He headed toward the dormitory hall, and that was going to be the next problem.

As he reached the corner, Gragg hit the key combo to lean left. He quickly spotted the MG42 team a hundred feet down the roofless, rubble-strewn corridor. The loader pointed and shouted, and the gunner turned toward him and opened fire just as Gragg ducked back again. Tracers whined past for a moment or two until the Krauts decided to save their ammo.

It was an engrossingly realistic game.

Gragg turned his view to face five other Allied players catching up behind him. This was fantastic. They'd never come this far with so few casualties. That meant only ten of the sixteen had been killed in the assault-a record low. He hit the command keys again, and his avatar shouted, "Charge!"

He raced straight across the hall toward a shallow alcove he knew of, immediately drawing fire again from the MG42 at the end of the hall. He watched his health meter drop quickly to 20 percent by the time he reached the safety of the alcove. The players right behind him tried to follow him into the alcove, but Gragg knew it could fit only one player at a time. Their avatars bumped and jumped against his, striving for cover until the Germans mowed them down. Three other players had hung back under cover, and they exchanged fire with the MG42 until Gragg heard what he was waiting for: silence from the Kraut machine gun. They were reloading.

Gragg switched to grenades and charged forward. As he ran over the corpses of his fallen comrades, he picked up their med kits, increasing his health back to 95 percent. It was an odd genre conceit that fallen players sprouted medical kits like Christmas presents, and that picking up a medical kit would immediately increase the health of injured characters-but right now Gragg was all for it. He wanted Boerner's head on a stick.

He could see the Krauts wrestling a belt of ammo into the open breech of their gun while he ran toward them. The machine gun barrel steamed ominously.

The detail of this game is fantastic.

Just as the Krauts slammed the breech closed again, Gragg hurled his grenade down the hallway. It was a perfect throw, and the Germans ran shouting from their machine gun nest.