Chapter 1

Where was he now? Ian Jackson thought.

He was standing on a giant conveyer belt running through some kind of madhouse factory. Giant gears clanked and clacked amongst puffs of steam. A lunatic carousel tune played in the background.

This didn't look like the usual hackneyed, sub-Tolkienesque setting he expected for a fantasy role-playing computer game. It was a cavernous factory, more suited to a First Person Shooter or Horror game, although the crazy organ-grinder music playing in the background seemed a poor fit for either.

Jackson wasn't alone on the conveyer belt. He might have been tempted to describe them as toys. They were yellow and looked like a plushy doll of a cartoon character--some kind of flightless bird with a long bill. A kiwi?

The dolls were hideous. They looked as though they'd been put together by demented lab assistants working under Doctor Frankenstein. The stitching was crude, visible, and looked more like scars. None of the dolls had legs or feet. Instead, a pair of miniature cartwheels was attached to the sides of their bodies. Jackson doubted they were toys. Children were more likely to run screaming than play with these.

They were also alive.

Jackson watched as one of the bird-doll-things sat up and blinked oversized cartoon eyes. It was maybe about three-foot in height. The thing turned a head and looked around. In animation it looked like a real-life cartoon gone horribly wrong.

More bird-doll-things stirred as the conveyer belt reached an end illuminated with purple and red spotlights. More of the bird-doll-things waited for them, but they were brown in colour rather than yellow and directed the new arrivals with the scowling efficiency of airport security personnel. Jackson watched as the bird-doll-thing ahead of him hopped off the end of the belt. It was given a leather bum bag and pointed in the direction of a growing queue.

Then it was Jackson's turn. He stepped off the end of the belt. The brown bird-doll-thing was halfway through the motion of giving Jackson a bum bag when it paused.

Jackson was about average height by human standards, which meant he towered over the three-foot-high bird-doll-thing. The brown attendant turned and found its bill level with Jackson's crotch. It tilted its head up a little, then a little more, and then tilted it up a lot more until it could actually see Jackson's face. It blinked slowly, as if aware something wasn't quite right with the picture but not exactly sure what.

"Um, where is this place?" Jackson asked.

Crazy oompah carousel music continued to blare away in the background.

"You're in the Nether Regions, mate," the bird-doll-thing said.

Nether Regions? Must be the setting for this game.

"What am I supposed to do?" Jackson asked.

He wanted to ask, 'What is my objective in this game?' but most characters he came across, even the obvious designated game tutors, rarely gave any indication they knew this was really a computer game.

"Work for the masters, pay off your debt, get reincarnated back to the living world, mate."

"Living world?"

"You're dead, mate," the bird-doll-thing said. "These are the Nether Regions. Souls are reincarnated here in the form of k'winnies and must work to pay off the debts their sinning accrued during their life, mate."

"Dead? No no no," Jackson said, shaking a finger.

He wasn't dead. It was just a computer game. He was trapped inside until ... well, he wasn't sure exactly. He'd thought it was until he completed the game, but the rules--and the game--kept changing.

"Mate, they all say that," the brown bird-doll-thing--k'winny?--said.

"Look at me," Jackson said. "Do I look like I belong here?"

The k'winny peered at him. It frowned. Or rather Jackson assumed the expression was a frown given that it had a cartoon bird face rather than a human face. It blinked. Then it turned around and fetched a novelty yellow baseball cap that resembled the top half of one of the k'winny's heads. The bill had a slender beak stitched into the fabric and there were a pair of large googly eyes glued to the front. The k'winny motioned for Jackson to duck down and then it reached up to place the k'winny cap on his head. It looked up and smiled. All was right in its world again.