So he was out, free from the computer quest world. The real world, by contrast, was shabbier. Also more complex, younger, older, more richly textured. He focused on remembering the key fact: you can't just kill people. Not here. They don't regenerate.
         He knocked on her door. She. The one for whom he had sacrificed the sword, the palace, the cup of blood. Her face. Pores huge. Something sloshy, sausage-like. Nothing like the women he was trained to know, the plastic -
         "But we could work it out ...."
         But she was already closing the door. She, too, had seen something nothing like what she had expected.
         He decided he'd make the best of it - assassin, torturer, hitman, professional arsonist, something like that. But it was a ruthlessly competitive world, and he didn't have the skills.
         These days, he kidnaps dogs for a living, and drinks out of brown paper bags, mumbling a little, old now, but he was once ... what was he? He cannot remember. The petrol fumes have dissolved it, have washed it all away.