Overview
Network States is a short story in Quarterlives. It is framed as a reported article by the narrator about HOIMMRT, a real-time online role-playing project in which players restage World War II through fictionalized national command structures.
The story is set mainly between August 2023 and June 2024 in contemporary online communities and real-world locations including San Francisco, Boise, Portland, and Mountain View. Its world uses recognizable messaging platforms, streaming sites, strategy games, startups, and political groups, while the central fictional element is HOIMMRT and the network of people who treat its simulated war as a serious social reality.
Plot
The narrator begins by meeting Harold Vaunnett at Harold’s San Francisco workplace. Harold, who uses the handle @Libberator, serves as Chief of the Imperial General Staff for the British Empire in HOIMMRT. He explains that the game is built from a heavily modified World War II strategy game and advances in real time, so multiple players hold military, political, and logistics roles for each major nation.
Harold describes the administrators behind HOIMMRT, including the anonymous creator Sovereigno and the worldmasters who keep the project running. The narrator also learns about BurgerTime, the American team Discord that Harold left after a dispute over American neutrality, and about the political tension between the United States and British factions.
The narrator interviews other Allied players, including KingSalad, a British logistics specialist named Nathan Samuels, and Humungoose, the new first sea lord of the British Navy. Their accounts show that HOIMMRT creates ongoing obligations, factional paranoia, and disputes over loyalty that continue outside normal play sessions.
The narrator then enters Axis online spaces and contacts Falklandoor, a German production minister. Falklandoor explains the Axis view that historical rules make them feel forced toward the same risks that doomed the real Axis powers, while also arguing that hindsight gives them an opportunity to win. The narrator attends an Axis call and later meets BigIron6, the leader of the HOIMMRT Third Reich faction, in Boise. BigIron6 says he chose the Axis side because winning as the historical loser would feel like escaping a predetermined life.
The article broadens to the East Asian HOIMMRT communities. Chinese players coordinate through QQ and benefit from Soviet aid arranged by CatgirlLenin, while Japanese players remain largely in private LINE chats and reject suspected outsiders. The narrator presents HOIMMRT as a global system of factional communities rather than a single Discord server.
Trapgate begins when Chester Beauchamp, an Axis naval player known as Dongwaffen, posts a Soviet battle-plan document in the public Axis General Discord. He says he obtained it from the laptop of Vera Velasquez, a transgender Soviet faction player known as @veravee, through sexual espionage. BigIron6 confirms the leak is real and announces that the German invasion of the Soviet Union is beginning. The narrator stays up through the night watching streams and monitoring the Axis, American, and Soviet communities as the Eastern Front collapses.
The leak produces real-world fallout. Soviet players debate whether the game should be rolled back, Millicent reports that Vera does not want authorities or media involved, and Vera stops logging on. CatgirlLenin and Siskover resign after Soviet leadership blames them for military failures. Later, Beauchamp is hospitalized in Portland after Ethan Frunn, a Tankies United II poster known as @Amethyst, attacks him. The local news treats the case as political-extremist violence and does not name HOIMMRT.
The game keeps growing despite the scandal. HOIMMRT gains a larger audience, more active players, and upgraded infrastructure. The narrator attends a BurgerTime party in Mountain View where Basadu, the American president player, announces that the United States faction will join the war. Harold tells the narrator that if the worldmasters started another game, he would probably play again. The story ends with the narrator describing HOIMMRT as a state between true war and true peace, where simulated conflict becomes real in the lives of its players.