Book 4: Sim Hell

Issue 1: Part One - Kei dreams the Lovely Angel crashes and she and Yuri are dead. Yuri heads up to heaven, while Kei goes the other way. Yuri apologizes, but she did warn Kei to study for the test. Kei wakes in her room on the Lovely Angel. She has been studying for her evaluation by the Central Computer. The Lovely Angel is headed for 3WA HQ so she can take the evaluation. No one ever remembers their evaluation because the CC erases their memories of the test afterwards. Kei secretly fears failing and being kicked out of the 3WA. Meanwhile, Yuri has a date with Slimepuppy - er, Dan. Yuri notices a BTR ship docked nearby. Kei goes to access facility Mavrides 25 to take her eval. She is plugged into a subordinate AI for some preliminary sims before the CC takes over the evaluation. The head "tech weasel" Kevin Sleet starts her on the sims. Yuri is on her date and spends the whole time talking about Kei. Dan can't get a word in. The access facility calls Yuri to tell her there is a problem with Kei and she runs off. Tech weasel Kevin tells Yuri that Kei has gotten herself stuck in a feedback loop and they can't pull her out without turning her into a vegetable and losing the whole 3WA SimNet. Yuri uses another link to enter the sims to try to help Kei. Yuri finds herself in a historical sim on an old workstation in orbit around Earth. She is attacked by a cyborg.

Issue 2: Part Two - Yuri joins up with Kei. Kei gives a nice exposition on the time period they are stuck in, the Nanoclysm of 2071, when an artificially intelligent consciousness uses nanotechnology to try to wipeout humanity. In eight days, eight billion people die on Earth and the inner Solar system. The nanoviruses stop on the eighth day, and Earth is a lifeless, quarantined wasteland. Kei and Yuri have to fight some cyborg vac-workers and leave the workstation for a higher orbit to finish the sim. When they finish the sim, they briefly find themselves in the SimNet main directory, but then get shunted into another sim. This one has them underwater on Earth at the end of the nanoclysm. They try to reach a sub to escape, but wind up dying in the sim. They are back in the SimNet directory again. Kei hates dying in sims. They get sent to another sim where they are in a pit in the ground where they are confronted by Kevin Sleet.

Issue 3: Part Three - Kevin J. Sleet tells them he is God. He sends Kei to her worst nightmare - she is thirty-five, and works for Hot & Junky Kwik Kuisine. She lives in a dump with a fat slobbish brute for a husband, and lives only to drink. Yuri is the lucky one - she died on the job at twenty-one.Suddenly, Yuri appears and drags Kei out of the sim. She has figured out how to use the SimNet directory. They notice that the BTR has quite a few black projects in the SimNet. They find a sim reserved for K. Sleet. Kei activates it and the Angels find themselves in the palace of Lord Sleet. The palace is populated with variations of Kei and Yuri as everything from pom-pom girls to cat-girls. The girls all tell the Angels about Kevin's plan to use nanotechnology to overthrow the 3WA leaving Kevin in charge with a large number of Kei and Yuri clones to serve as his Loving Servants. Kevin shows up and the fight begins. Kei winds up back in the pit again in a straight jacket with Kevin as her shrink. After a fight, the sim changes again, and Kei is now an Elven Princess held hostage by Warrior Mage Kevin. Yuri is the Valiant Knight coming to save her. Kei gets herself free for a moment, then Kevin changes to a huge monster. Kei finds she can summon things inside the sim, then winds up back in the directory again.

Issue 4: Part Four - Kei starts summoning all kinds of weapons while Yuri find the command node. They go back to find Kevin in a personal hot tub, a Yuri clone in a cheerleader outfit, and a Kei clone in only an apron trying to cook. Kevin introduces them to "Wally," his hypercomputer, network of a couple hundred trillion nanocomputers. He plans to use Wally to take over the 3WA Central Computer. Kei finds her weapons don't work. Kevin tells her he programmed that into the command node. Kei does the next best thing and uses her largest gun as a club. They notice Kevin gets hot as the nanoviruses repair the damage, so Yuri summons a wicked sword, the Gashmaster! to run him through. After a brief fight, Kei finds herself in her dream where the Lovely Angel crashes. This time, Kei breaks free and terminates the sim. She's back at the fight between Kevin and Yuri. She wraps Kevin's cape around a bust of himself and pushes it out the window. Kevin climbs back and shoots Kei and Yuri. All of a sudden, his clones attack. They are the real Kei and Yuri who took the clone's costumes. They mess Kevin up badly. He is really generating some heat. Time is up and Wally attacks the Central Computer. Wally explodes as the CC addresses them. It turns out that the CC is a nanoviral consciousness left as a gift to the surviving humans at the end of the nanoclysm. Attacks like Wally are easily dealt with. Kei and Yuri wake from the sims with no memory. Kei is told she passed and Yuri is thanked for her participation. They leave as Kei gloats about how she never had any worries about passing. Off to one side, Kevin Sleet comes too with no memories of what happened.