Howl: A World at War Novel Read Online Free PDF

she groaned as she leaned to one side. “Can you imagine how fat we'd be if we didn't?”
    “ Not something I really want to think about,” Zach said. He had run track in high school, and he still enjoyed it.
    Nora stopped stretching. “Well, time to get ready.” She pulled a Chicago Cubs hat out of her bag. “This is going to be great.”
    Zach stood up and headed for his room to get his jersey. “Definitely,” he said.

     
    CHAPTER 3
    The Spartan Way
     
     
    “ Why am I a Cubs fan?” Danny groaned out loud.
    “ That was pretty brutal, huh?” Javy asked.
    “ Yeah, it was,” Danny said. “I don't know why I even bother getting excited.”
    “ That didn't look pretty, but what happened?” Selene asked. “I didn't get time to check the game log.”
    “ They had their annual meltdown last night,” Danny said. “They had a three run lead at the top of the ninth, but then Ignacio walked two runners. And then the Reds hit a home run.”
    “ Ouch,” Selene said.
    “ That wasn't the worst part,” Nora said. “Shin Riku hit a double in the bottom of the thirteenth inning with no outs. Know what happened next? Groundout, strikeout, strikeout. No runs.”
    Danny leaned back in his chair and groaned again. “Fifteen innings. I'm so tired now.”
    “You three look it,” Miko commented.
    “ How are you holding up?” Gavin asked Zach.
    “ When's football season?” Zach said with a shake of his head.
    “ We are such masochists,” Danny said. At this rate, the sun was going to implode before the Cubs won the World Series.
    “ Don't doze off,” Xavier warned.
    “ Don't worry. I'll just hype myself up on coffee,” Danny said. In truth, even though he was tired he was fully awake. They were at another interview session with Dr. Richard Unger, a sociologist studying World at War at the behest of the game's creator, Elysium Visions.
    Danny hadn't thought much about the sociological and psychological implications of World at War to begin with. It was odd, considering that he was a philosophy student in the process of completing his doctorate, but to Danny the game had simply been entertainment. It was good entertainment, all told. Along with Zach and Selene he had been a beta tester, and he had enjoyed everything about the combat system. But that had changed once they started to experience the open world. It was no longer a matter of soldier against soldier. World at War may have ostensibly been about fighting, but in reality it was a political game at its core. It was like Carl von Clausewitz had said: war was simply a continuation of political policy by other means. But what were their political ends in the virtual world?
    Dr. Unger had picked up on that and had posed a question to them. Was their war with Ragnarok based on a duel of ideologies? Dr. Unger had posed the theory that they saw themselves as democratic, while Ragnarok was authoritarian. Thus, they gravitated toward conflict because of their clashing ideologies. Hydra espoused freedom while Ragnarok emphasized control.
    Danny had disagreed with that conclusion. To him, they lived in a world like the one described by Thomas Hobbes: life was nasty, brutish and short without a powerful authority to oversee everything, and both groups possessed such authority, even though they did so in different ways. Ragnarok's leadership was extremely centralized, centering around their company commander, Lucas Otrar. To all appearances Hydra was much more egalitarian, but to Danny they were simply two sides of the same coin. Hydra's council still had ultimate authority over the alliance, even if it was slightly more decentralized.
    And anyhow, Danny didn't see the conflict as one about ideology. Hydra wanted freedom from Ragnarok's oppression, to be sure, but the conflict came from something else. It wasn't about ideals, or about a lofty abstract concept. It was the same as two cavemen beating each other with sticks. It was simply about dominance.
    But then