Cover

Dedication

To the students at Pelican Falls First Nations High School:

Visiting your school over the years, I’ve noticed you face many things going to school away from home, some good and some bad, but you face them all with courage.

I started this book thinking it might be cool if you could read something that represented our backgrounds and some of the realities you face.

Ando-bawaajigek—seek your dreams!

Epigraph

“We don’t want to create two worlds, but walk together in one world—relating to each other as having our own uniqueness that we mutually respect.”

—SENATOR MURRAY SINCLAIR

Anishinaabe Terms and Pronunciation Guide

Anama’edaa (ah-numb-ah-yay-TAH): Let us pray

Anishinaabe (a-nish-in-NAH-bay): Ojibwe or Indigenous

Bagonegiizhigok (bug-oh-nay-KEESH-ig-oak): Hole in the day

Baakinan (buck-in-NONE): Open it!

Binesi (bin-NEH-see): Thunderbird

Eniwek igo kiga’onji-pimaadiz ndiwe’igan (AY-knee-wake EE-go key-gohn-jih-pee-MAH-tizz in-tay-WAY-gun): Through my drum you will live just that much more

Kookom (COOK-em): Grandmother

Mishi-pizhiw (mi-SHIP-i-shoe): A supernatural being in Anishinaabe culture

Nameg (nah-MAYK): Sturgeon (plural)

Ni-noonde-pimaadiz (nih-known-day-pee-MAH-tizz): I want to live

Onizhishin Anishinaabe Aking (oh-NISH-ish-in ah-nish-in-NAW-bay AH-king): Anishinaabe country is beautiful

Onjine (OWN-jin-nay): The way you behave will come back to you

Patai’itiwin (put-TIE-it-tee-win): The way you behave will come back to your children

Waawaate (WAH-wah-tay): The northern lights

CHAPTER 1

It was the best of Bugz, it was the worst of Bugz. She created life, she destroyed worlds. She appeared invincible, she knew only defeat. She was Indigenous, she didn’t belong. She moved with absolute confidence, she couldn’t shake the tiny voice inside: It’s no big deal, it’s the end of the world. In many ways, Bugz was just like everybody else…until she went online into the Floraverse. There, Bugz’s every move was watched by the entire world, who either loved her or hated her.

Hidden by total darkness, Bugz pressed her body close to a cedar tree, edging nearer to danger. She rarely hid in the virtual world of the ’Verse. Apart from her celebrity, there was her look: she wore a custom skin with an athletic physique packed into a black, neon-pink, and Day-Glo-green outfit. The ensemble borrowed from the body armor of science-fiction superheroes and the embroidered designs of a pow-wow dancer. Floral patterns that paid homage to the beadwork of her Anishinaabe Ancestors accented her bodysuit. Her midriff was exposed in a way that would’ve raised eyebrows among the aunties back on the Rez. Those older women preached modesty, but anytime Bugz’s mom heard those so-called teachings that singled out women’s bodies, she’d always stick up for her daughter and say, “That’s just the colonization talking.”

Bugz tossed her hair to one side and leaned in closer to her prey. Her heads-up-display visor cast a rose-colored glow across her cheekbones as she studied her targets. On-screen, a stream of comments flooded her peripheral vision. She paid the chat feed absolutely no mind, at least not for the moment. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel as she prepared for a huge battle, one she had no intention of losing. Besides, she’d turned her location off hours ago so no one on the stream could reveal her plan to the marks. She inched closer to the edge of the cedar trees and listened to them shouting down below. All five hundred of them. She liked her odds.

“We worked too hard and fought too long for anything less than victory!”

Bugz recognized the imposing eight-foot-tall warrior now shouting—Alpha. A scar bisected his face, testifying to a past battle. His eyes—each a different color, one green and one brown—reminded Bugz of a wild dog, a husky that fled captivity and returned as the leader of a pack of wolves. Bugz knew his online backstory. Alpha began his ascent in the ’Verse by slaughtering the gamer clan that welcomed him in as a noob. As fierce as he looked he still only stood second in the ’Verse’s global fan rankings. Bugz slowly drew a deep breath and reminded herself that she ranked #1.

Bugz noted all of Alpha’s followers gathered below wore an Ø symbol on their arms as a way of paying homage to their scarred leader. They called themselves Clan:LESS, the clan that was not a clan, a nod to Alpha cannibalizing his first team. They counted among their ranks a mishmash of the best soldiers and mercenaries from across the Floraverse. Bugz studied their artillery: massive guns, laser cannons, and the coolest energy swords crypto could buy. Not bad, she thought to herself. But nothing special.

“For years we’ve journeyed across the ’Verse seeking what is rightfully ours!” Alpha yelled. Bugz, still hidden, rolled her eyes. “The resources, the creatures, the weapons we need to dominate the Spirit World. All of it is rightfully ours. Men built this technology, men perfected the blockchain, and now it’s run by a woman? No! We will take it back from her.” Bugz studied Alpha, scanning the obedient stares of his charges. “We’ll take it back in battle. She can never beat us…we must always win!” The crowd roared its approval.

Gross. Bugz stepped farther back behind the cedar tree. She hated Clan:LESS—they harassed women who played the game, shared sexist content, and banned women from joining their ranks.

“I thought this VR and AR stuff promised to make a better world,” Bugz whispered to herself. The chat in her display screen exploded with comments. “Oh well. I guess we can create better technology without becoming better people.”

She peeked around the corner of her hiding spot again and sized up the battlefield. At present, 499 Clan:LESS members encircled Alpha, still hanging on his every word. He screamed at the assembled troops, psyching them up for the coming battle.

“This coward Bugz wants to take your lives from you. She wants to take your weapons from you. She wants to force you to respawn and lose everything you’ve fought for.” Alpha paused for dramatic effect. “But will you let that happen?”

“NO!” roared the crowd.

“Are we going to fight?!” Alpha shouted.

“YES!” the crowd replied.

“Are we going to win?”

“YES!”

“We launch our sneak attack tonight!” concluded Alpha, thrusting his fist in the air.

“YEAHHH!” The crowd responded by punching their weapons into the sky and high-fiving the clanmates closest to them. They chanted Alpha’s name.

“Pro tip: don’t announce your sneak attack before you actually launch your sneak attack.” Bugz winked to her audience streaming along online. Millions of her followers watched from their own heads-up displays inside the ’Verse or on phones in the real world. Bugz crouched, bending her knees, as she prepared to leap out from her hiding spot. She felt a bead of sweat gathering on her brow in real life. The chat in her display sparkled with activity.

“Ahh, what am I getting all tensed up for?” She blew her hair away quickly, stood up straight, and stepped out of the shadows. “Hey losers, look over here!”

Some of Bugz’s viewers were warning the Clan:LESS horde an attack was imminent. The warriors who noticed the warnings took their eyes off Alpha and began scanning the horizon. They were the first to see her. Bugz—the specter, the legend, the phenom—appeared before them, all swagger and attitude. She pulled a flaming, torch-tipped spear back like a javelin thrower, illuminating her bodysuit in the process. She took careful aim and launched the projectile in a long, soaring arc that delivered its payload directly to the center of the crowd. She stood on one leg to admire her throw as the spear landed, splattering the horde of Clan:LESS soldiers with fire and flame.

Instantly dozens of soldiers evaporated into the ether.

“S3reum was eliminated by Bugz.”

“Nigel_The_Knight was eliminated by Bugz.”

“xx.GFguerilla.xx was eliminated by Bugz.”

Dozens of other gamertags flickered and disappeared into the sky.

The wounded stampeded in all directions.

“You cowards!” Alpha cried. “Don’t run! This is what we wanted. Our enemy is right here. The battle is on!”

Bugz stood on the higher ground, taking in the carnage and confusion below and feeling quite proud of herself. She looked down to see one member of Clan:LESS just staring at her, frozen. She laughed. Bugz got this sort of reaction all the time. Other gamers often seized up in her presence like kids meeting a childhood idol.

“Get her!” Alpha yelled. The 450 or so surviving members of Clan:LESS tore up the incline as Bugz turned to the hills and ran.

Before she could reach a full sprint, laser beams and machine-gun fire rained down all around. As if dodging the spray from one gun wasn’t hard enough, Bugz found herself dodging overlapping fire from several automatic weapons at once. She moved as though she had the power to slow down time. As the tsunami of weapon fire chased her, she bobbed and weaved a perfect path that avoided each beam and bullet.

With so much firepower bearing down, there came a moment when no path remained for Bugz, no way to move that wouldn’t see her riddled with slugs and lasers. In this instant, the chat screen in her heads-up display filled with expletives and shouting.

“d@rcy987: INCOMING!”

“sweet_n_lowa: #!@& no!”

“Porselyn: Holy @#$%!”

The Floraverse’s automatic chat-censoring captured the worry of the fans watching Bugz’s livestream. They all aspired to fight as forcefully and move as gracefully themselves, but none could match Bugz’s preternatural ability in the ’Verse. So they watched her, imagining themselves in her shoes. Or moccasins.

The view counter ticked upward; this battle between the Floraverse’s greatest individual warrior and the most ruthless clan in existence was pulling in the most views in the history of the game. But with the artillery closing in, it seemed as though it would come to a premature end. In just a millisecond, the lasers, bullets, and spears would converge on Bugz and eviscerate her.

But just as the first of the beams approached, Bugz traced a quick zigzag motion through the air behind her. Instantly the roots of the nearby trees tore through the earth and grew thick, forming a shield. The laser beams and gunfire ripped through this organic barrier in a fraction of a second, but Bugz didn’t need any more than that. By the time the gunfire obliterated the plant matter, Bugz had gained a step and was once again weaving a perfect path through the mayhem.

Her chat screen exploded with gold coins, flowers, and diamond rings as her fans showered her with gifts, inspired by her virtuosity. Bugz could back herself into a corner and stun them all with an impossible escape. Fans paid for the virtual gifts themselves with real money or crypto, and Bugz, like everyone else in the Floraverse who received a gift, earned a micropayment every time she received something from a fan. Bugz glanced at her balance. She’d just earned enough to buy a new car.

Behind her, Alpha raised a giant, oversized cannon onto his shoulder. It resembled a jet engine, with a blue-and-white glow sparking outward from where the turbine should have been. He aimed and fired a massive energy blast, incinerating a huge chunk of the forest and splattering shrapnel up the hillside toward Bugz.

As the explosion closed in on Bugz, the heavens opened up and what looked like a giant black eagle screamed down from the sky. It swooped down to Bugz, snatched her in its talons, and lifted her up to the clouds. Another energy blast tore a huge chunk out of the mountainside and triggered an avalanche. This buried the first lines of Clan:LESS warriors on the hill and sent the others running back down the slope until the rockslide abated.

Bugz rode the Thunderbird over the peak of the mountain.

“Monff: HOW are you so lucky?”

“BhadBhab: Nice save!”

“**-GirlGirl-**: No way!!”

Her chat screen continued to flood with comments from fans. These ranged from cheers for this latest twist in the theater of war to the sort of random abusive comments women gamers always faced. And, of course, spam.

“DerkWerk: You’re a fraud!”

“Yalta187: Affirmative action at its finest.”

“ManTan1997: Win a new phone, DM me to find out how!”

Bugz paid them no mind, her awareness completely consumed with setting a trap for the approaching horde. With a slight nod of her head, she conveyed to the Thunderbird the arcing flight path she wanted her to take. Closing her eyes, she marshaled every other living being in this virtual landscape to her side.

CHAPTER 2

“How does she do it?” Feng asked. Though he stood among his clan brothers, all of whom were blocked from pursuing Bugz for a moment by the landslide, he wasn’t speaking to any of them in particular. Feng’s virtual assistant assumed the question was directed at it and popped to life in his heads-up display, launching a user-generated video tutorial explaining the ’Verse.

“The Floraverse is different from other virtual worlds before it,” the young voice said over a montage of idyllic scenes from the Spirit World. His phone played the English language video inside his visor and translated the audio instantly into Mandarin for his earbuds. Feng scanned the battlefield and half ignored the feat of computer translation. “Rather than letting users build their environment out of minerals and tools, or forts and wood, the game engine that powers the Floraverse is modeled after living, growing things…” Feng swiped past the video and on to another one as he began to climb the boulders the avalanche had left in his way. This video was labeled “The Bugz Conspiracy.”

“While many other players in this world seek to exploit the Floraverse, Bugz lives in concert with it, appearing to be able to call anything she can imagine into existence,” an on-screen host intoned. Feng’s boot slipped momentarily from a crevice. He stumbled and regained his footing as the host continued. “No one knows exactly how she does it, but the result is that she has become the best player the game has ever known.”

Feng, now running atop the rockslide, skipped ahead in the video playlist. After a two second pre-roll ad for a new phone, another video began, this one called “Bugz’s Top 10 Creations.” The narrator from the first video returned. “While other players struggle to build an arsenal that might include a few weapons and an animal to ride around on, Bugz, in her time in the Floraverse, has become the GOAT. She doesn’t ride a donkey; she rides supernatural beasts. Rumor has it her Indigenous identity plays a big role—she taps into the collective consciousness of her Ancestors. Her greatest weapon is not a gun or knife but her ability to summon all the virtual beings around her and create things no other player can imagine.”

“Hey, Bugz’s #1 fan,” a member of Clan:LESS named Joe said to Feng with a mocking smile. “Yeah, I saw you freeze up when you fell and she made eye contact with you.” Joe batted his eyelashes. “I know you love her. But you run faster when you’re not watching videos.”

“Shut up,” Feng responded with a laugh. He swiped the video window closed and ran harder. He felt good that a clanmate he looked up to had been watching him, even if it came with a little razzing. Feng put his head down and sprinted to catch up to his clanmates.

CHAPTER 3

Bugz’s legendary status was only as good as her last battle, and this time she knew she faced a huge challenge. Confidence and talent could only go so far when you were this badly outnumbered. The angry pack of clanmates chasing her had started out wanting her riches, but now after her ambush they’d surely want revenge too. They wouldn’t stop at simply defeating her either…they needed to humiliate her.

“Down there!” she said, pointing with her lips in traditional Anishinaabe fashion, to a lake that spread from the foot of the mountain and on to the horizon. The Thunderbird sped to within a few feet of the water’s surface. The first soldiers of the Clan:LESS horde poured over the mountaintop. The reflection of the winged giant shone across the water as Bugz and the Thunderbird flew by. The moonlight and the starry sky above lit the surroundings magically, the atmosphere amplifying every movement of the combatants below.

Laser beams sped past and bullets pierced the waves. Bugz named her home base Lake of the Torches in part because of the way the stars and moons danced across the waters. It reminded Bugz of her father teaching her to torch fish as a girl. Now, with an unholy military apocalypse raining down, the lake’s name took on a new meaning. The tracers of gunfire reflected back at the heavens as laser beams shone into the waters and scattered into oblivion.

The Thunderbird banked back toward the mountain as Bugz dove from her back and plunged deep beneath the waves.

“Get into the water!” Alpha yelled as the Clan:LESS horde reached the shores of the lake. Some pulled personal submersibles and scuba gear from their packs and plunged into the waters to pursue their target. Others assembled and launched gunships, tracking Bugz from the surface. On board one such ship, equipped with a massive cannon, Alpha set out to a spot where he guessed she might re-emerge. Flashlight and spotlight beams swept frantically across the surface of the lake as the search for Bugz continued—to no avail. Alpha and his crew saw nothing in the black waves except the reflections of the lights above. After five minutes, the excitement died down, and a deathly quiet settled on the water.

A rumbling began deep beneath the surface.

“She’s coming up!” The radio channel connecting all of the members of Clan:LESS crackled to life with a dispatch from one of the submersibles.

“Everyone train your sights on the target,” Alpha shouted across the waves. He located the radio signal flashing on his map and pointed to a spot on the lake. The rumbling grew louder.

“Give us an update,” Alpha yelled into his mic, his voice betraying a hint of nerves.

Silence spread across the radio channel as the sound of the rumble only increased.

Suddenly, the lake roared. The water frothed and parted as a massive snake tore through the surface, shooting into the sky above. It roared like a giant lion. This fierce, scaled creature looped high into the air and traced a Ferris wheel path against the stars above. The Clan:LESS soldiers stared in frozen awe, and remained that way for several seconds as the creature continued to arc across the heavens.

The snake reached the pinnacle of his flight path and turned back toward the soldiers, slowly at first but soon with an increasing and terrifying speed. He screamed again. In this instant, the beast showed his face to the mercenaries below, his head that of a giant panther crowned with two menacing horns. To some of the soldiers, he must have resembled a saber-toothed devil; others recognized him from the rock paintings flashing on their screens during tutorial videos. Either way, the soldiers did not move.

“FIRE!” yelled Alpha, charging his energy cannon.

One by one, the members of Clan:LESS sprang into action. They fired into the sky, but it amounted to nothing. Before they could train their sights on the creature, he struck. The horned serpent plunged into one of the gunships and ran through the soldiers on board. Clan:LESS fighters were tossed from his path like grass from a lawn mower. He carried the remnants of the boat deep underwater. Dozens of gamertags flew toward the sky as members of Clan:LESS departed the Spirit World. Silence returned for a moment before the leviathan resurfaced underneath another boat and trapped it in his jaws, shaking it from side to side in the air like a dog playing with a stick.

This beast was Mishi-pizhiw, perhaps the most intimidating of Bugz’s creations.

Mishi-pizhiw dove out over the water and his body crashed down across a huge tranche of the Clan:LESS armada. More than a hundred gamertags evaporated upward. In an instant, with the contours of the battle now shifted, Bugz was owning Clan:LESS.

“Retreat!” Alpha screamed, diving into the water just moments before the razor-sharp fins on Mishi-pizhiw’s back tore his boat in half. The ensuing wake swamped Alpha’s energy cannon. It blinked on and off listlessly a few times before sinking into the lake, never to be seen again. One of the remaining boats plucked Alpha from the waves as he and the surviving members of Clan:LESS made a break for the shore.

Once Alpha was safely on board the boat, Bugz heard him scream to his followers, “This is not a retreat, we are simply regrouping! We must always win!”

CHAPTER 4

Their horde now wrecked, Feng and the other Clan:LESS survivors beached their boats on the shore. He looked over his shoulder at the water-borne beast bearing down on them. Neither he nor any of his clanmates saw Bugz directly ahead of them, swinging her obsidian sword, until the first heads began to roll. More gamertags ascended to the heavens.

Feng tripped as he jumped off the boat and fired blindly behind him. From his hands and knees, he struggled onto the muddy shores of Lake of the Torches to reload his gun, cursing to himself as he went.

“Regroup on the far side of the mountain!” shouted one of Alpha’s henchmen, carrying their injured boss across his shoulders like a firefighter. Feng touched the raised Ø branded onto his arm.

“Well, they say Alpha likes to get carried away.” Joe grinned at his own dad-joke as he ran by in the direction of the retreating soldiers.

As Feng tried to get back to his feet, he saw a pair of sleek black shoes before him. Emblazoned on their vamps—in the style of traditional Anishinaabe moccasins—was a design familiar to many across the Floraverse: a neon-pink flower adorned by Day-Glo-green leaves. He looked up past the shoes, and past their owner’s hips, ripped torso, and shoulders.

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