by Arthur Stone
“What do you want me to say? How could I possibly find you a manual on removing restraints here? Plus, cuffs come in all different kinds of designs.”
“Fine, I’ll figure it out.”
“Wait a second. Ugh, it’s so hard to think without beer in my system. Here’s one option for you. It’s not the greatest, but it might work. Southeast of you there’s a cell tower, a landmark. About two miles away. The map might have the distance wrong, but it’s close. From that tower, walk due east about four miles. When you encounter a railroad, turn left. There’s a stable a mile or two down the railroad. It’s got a settlement, and the locals will uncuff you for a small price.”
“I’ve had about enough of settlements. The Spiders, remember? Appearing in cuffs would make me the talk of the town right from the start. You know how that’ll end up.”
“Relax, this settlement isn’t the place for Spiders.”
“Why not? Why do they avoid it? They’re everywhere in this area, you just said that.”
“This is a special case. You’ve heard that advanced digis have their own stables, right?”
“Oh. It’s an NPC stable?”
“Right. They’ll let a player with a high Humanity score enter, but not for long. You won’t want to hang around there for long, anyway. NPC stables are a rare piece of theater. But your Humanity is great, so get them to help you with your shackles, and you can even buy what you need. As far as amenities go, it’s your ordinary stable. Shops, taverns, hotels, brothels. Just all digis. If there are any other players there, it’ll only be a couple. No one will give you any trouble as long as you don’t make any. Plus, you look kind of dumb. If you do run into a player they’ll take you for an NPC as long as they don’t inspect you.”
Cheater was starting to assemble a promising plan. “Hey, listen...
Are there lots of these NPC stables around?”
“They’re everywhere, like pimples on a teenager. But that’s at Continental scale. They’re about one order of magnitude rare than player stables. Something like that. Also, remember that digis come in many kinds. They’re not always good ‘people.’ There are even red digis, and when they build settlements, they usually go to great lengths to make sure they’re hidden. You don’t want to end up in those settlements.”
“What other NPC villages are nearby?”
“Ah, so you think you’ve hit upon a gold mine. Thing you’ll forget entirely about ordinary stables and stick to NPC stables exclusively.”
“It’s not a bad idea.”
“Yes it is. You can visit now and then, sure. But even that’s a bad omen. When a place contains a lot of advanced digis, it also contains problems for players. Very unpredictable problems. And we players try to avoid problems, if we’re smart.”
“I have enough problems already, so it’s still an option.”
“Maybe, but seriously, don’t spend too much time with NPCs. They’re like shit magnets. Except instead of the shit smacking them in the face, it smacks you. Understand? Look, all this talking has me suffering from a withering thirst. I need a beer.”
* * *
On flat terrain, moving at a reasonable pace without stopping, the average person covers about three miles per hour. According to March’s numbers, Cheater had to go seven or eight miles. With stops for observation, that killed about four hours.
But it killed only time, not ghouls. During the whole trip, Cheater never needed to use his weapons. He did see ghouls three times, but they were all weak, so he managed to go around them without being noticed. The tiny droplets of experience he would get weren’t worth the trouble. Any battle was a risk. Even if you won, more dangerous creatures might hear or see the evidence and track you down. Cheater didn’t need progress points right now; he needed free hands.
March’s cartographical abilities were, as it turned out, unimpaired by his addiction to beer. After turning at the locations he had mentioned, Cheater walked nearly two miles down a one-track railroad and noticed the characteristic divide in the land where the landscape, the plants, and even the rails changed character. The railway continued into the new cluster, but it looked very old—deeply rusted, with its wooden ties rotting to dust in places.
This was the stable. Everything in it looked abandoned and overgrown. But the trail running along the railroad looked fresh. Perhaps it was patrolled. After all, NPCs needed to protect themselves from the dangers of the Continent, too.
Cheater was wary of mines and other surprises often used to protect stable borders, so he climbed halfway up the railway embankment and proceeded with difficulty, holding out his shackled hands as far as he could for balance and stepping forward carefully, a mock tightrope walker. It was uncomfortable, but better than having his legs blown off. The space often became very open, as well. But stable residents didn’t like people sneaking around. It was customary to approach in plain sight.
NPC stables turned out to be no exception. Cheater had barely made a quarter mile when a rough voice scraped its way out of the bushes, telling him not to move, and especially not to go for a weapon. And also not to run away.
Everything that followed was similar to what had happened at the other stables. Some brief questions, suspicious glances at his shackles, attempts to catch him contradicting his own story, and then finally directions on the shortest safe path to the settlement. The only difference was the information shown in the inspect window.
The village itself was unimpressive. Much poorer than Pyramid. It was an almost-perfect square about a hundred yards in length and width, featuring walls pieced together from every material available: concrete blocks, bricks, mortar, pieces of vehicle frames, bulldozer buckets, steel sheets, and shipping containers, with the holes filled with rocks, sandbags, bars, and more.
The buildings within the walls had much the same construction. All kinds of materials, with no signs of any planning. There weren’t any streets in the traditional sense of the word, just places that were uncluttered save occasional interruption by nondescript shacks and sheds.
He didn’t have to check in his weapons, though. That was good.
Yet his first questions at the gate checkpoint were about weapons. Someone here had to be able to fix or assemble weapons, and that person would have tools.
A few minutes later, he was knocking on an exquisitely unremarkable door. Two words were carelessly painted on the wall about it: “Gun Repair.”
“It’s open!” a voice shouted from the other side, in an unfriendly tone.
The creak of the hinges was disheartening for a repair shop. Cheater stepped inside and looked around. The small room was crowded with workbenches, machining tools, and shelves littered with metal implements and products of all kinds. In the midst of it all, a man of ambiguous age sat on a stool. He was the kind of man who could look fourteen or forty, depending on the lighting and his facial expression.
His look was not evil, but it was annoyed, and his eyes bored into Cheater from underneath the carelessly combed bangs of grayish hair shielding them.
Object: potential infected. Currently presumably immune. ID 396-139-162-054-228. Unidentified. Presumably has weaponsmithing skills. Possibly armed. No Continental skills detected.
An ordinary NPC, just like all the others Cheater had met. The information in their windows varied significantly from that in player windows. Differentiating required no close inspection.
“Well, what are you staring at me like that for?” the NPC asked after a long pause.
“I need a weaponsmith. Or somebody who can help me with these,” Cheater raised his shackles.
“Let’s pretend I’m a weaponsmith. How might I help you? Do your bracelets need polishing? That’s more of a jeweler’s job, young man. And I don’t know of any jewelers around here. Not a very common profession on the Continent, where few people have inclinations towards the ostentatious.”
“We can skip the polishing, then. I just want to get them off. Without damaging my hands. And you have all kind
s of tools and machines here.”
“Show me.”
“You’ll help me?”
“Like I said, show me.”
Cheater approached silently, squeezing between vices and presses and smelters, and stretched out his hands.
“What did you do to the chain?
Bite it with your teeth?”
“No, just scratched it up with my nails.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
The smith grabbing a piece of steel wire from his workbench and nonchalantly bent it before grabbing Cheater by one hand, then by the other, picking the lock of each of the cuffs. He gently pulled them, and they came off with a click. The man offered him the cuffs.
“Here you go. All done.”
“I don’t really need those, actually. How much do I owe you?”
“For what? For taking these irons off? When you came in here, did you see the sign that says, ‘The awesome dude sitting inside is also king of the cuffs’?”
“Um, no.”
“Good, because then you’d be seeing things. I’m the only person here. The weaponsmith named Lefty. Weaponsmiths work with weapons, buddy. And I work with good weapons. Do you think these bracelets are good weapons? I don’t think so. You were just passing by and I helped you out. No need to confuse help with business. Alright, well, say thank you and be on your way. Why are you staring at me like that again?”
“I’ve just never seen a... a... You have a strange look about you, is all.”
“By which I take it you mean you’ve never seen a digi like me before. Am I right?”
Cheater just nodded. He had no idea was this self-consciousness the digi had really meant.
“You’re shy. Can’t even manage a ‘yes.’ Usually you players aren’t so polite.”
“So what’s different about you?”
“You don’t visible stables much, do you. You haven’t heard about the different kinds of digis and all that.”
“I know that almost all of them become infecteds within a short time, but that some have immunity. Like those in this village.”
“We come in all different kinds. Some people even think that players and digis come from the same source. That we’re copied from the real world. Some of us end up bona fide replicas, save the memory problems. Others of us end up as good a copy as a crumpled piece of black construction paper accidentally run through a Xerox low on ink. The piece that gets thrown into the waste basket. So the System tosses those in the scrap pile—assigns them to replenish the ranks of the infecteds—and then picks from the rest. The very best copies receive player status, and the rest are either given the infection or become immune digis. So, how do you like this hypothesis?”
“I’m not sure I can grapple with it, to be honest.”
“There’s something about it, though. We see little hints that it’s not just an absurd conspiracy theory. For example, this world has certain special items. Trophies from the beasts. Difficult to find. Only in the rarest beasts. These items have an additional property which does nothing for players: If a digi takes one, he gets immunity.”
“I’ve never heard of that before.”
“Ask more experienced players, then. White pearls and gold pearls can save us digis. I doubt you’ll ever see one, though. Though I do hear that the man in charge of the Spiders has been seeking a gold pearl for a long time. His bounty is up to two million now, and yet still no one has brought him one. You can get a white pearl for fifty or sixty grand, if you can ever find it for sale. So of course no one ever uses an item like that to save a digi. Why, then, did the System give these treasures a property that is worthless for players? Perhaps that really is just a hint about our true nature. That we digis are flawed copies. But I’m a good copy. Without your inspect mode, you wouldn’t have known I was a digi.”
“Yes. They usually give themselves away by the way they talk. It’s just all wrong. But you’re different,” Cheater agreed.
“Perhaps the number of players is limited, and there was just no place among them for me. The System is inscrutable. Some players are even worse than dumb digis. Incapable of conversation, with a dull look about them and generally stupid behavior. You know what I mean.”
“Do you pump your stats and levels, too?”
“Yes. We have to grow stronger, or we get eaten. And we don’t get ninety-nine resurrections. One life only. After that, you’re gone forever. But if you make it a whole month, you get an extra life. And another a month after that, up to a maximum of ten bonus lives. Well, you can get more than ten, but that requires rare, expensive loot items.”
“If you die with an extra life, where do you respawn?”
“In the nearest NPC stable. Like this one. Usually ours come in a couple hundred yards from the settlement walls.”
“That’s better, at least. We get resurrected in a city, and we have to get out fast in order to avoid getting eaten right away.”
“I’ve heard. And I have not forgotten my own story from when I first came here. A long, unpleasant story. Our respawn location is probably compensation for our lack of lives and for everything else we lose. Alright, young man, see you later. Come back if you need a good weapon.”
“Do you only repair weapons, or do you sell them, too?”
“I buy, sell, and repair weapons. My selection isn’t as good as it is with some of the shopkeepers here, but sometimes I have exclusive items.”
Cheater drew one of his arrows. “Have anything like this?
Of the same length and weight, if possible.”
The smith twirled the arrow between his fingers, then ran them along its shaft before sniffing it for some reason. “This is the work of the northern masters.
Elegant, but too light, in my opinion. I can get you heavier arrows. Better penetration power.”
But Cheater had a weight limit to think about. “I can’t do heavier.”
“Why?”
“Because... well, I have good reason.”
“Ah, I think I understand. Sadly, I can’t help you with that. Go speak with Boeing. He probably has these, and his prices are good.”
“Thank you. Do you know if there are any good people here with quests? Looking for someone to retrieve something, or anything like that.”
“What a thoughtful player. Do you really think that NPCs just walk around with System quests floating through their heads?”
“I’m not really an expert on these things. I just happened to run into a valuable quest given to me by an NPC merchant not long ago. I ended up with a decent boost. Since there are plenty of NPCs here, I thought my chances might be good.”
“The System decides all matters related to quests. Ask around, socialize, and perhaps something will come up. But you’ll need a lot of luck for that.”
“Meaning Luck?”
“Just ordinary luck. And maybe numerical Luck, too. That’s a tough stat to figure out. Unpredictable, at best.”
“Can I get a map of the area?”
“I don’t see why not. All you have to do is find the right specialist, and you can get any service you need here. Except that our healer, and all mentalists really, have difficulties working with you players. Otherwise, NPC specialists are equivalent to players. Just heed my advice and do not stay here for long. Players and digis have been kept separate since the very beginning. This rule applies to everyone save a very select few.”
“I know. My comrade informed me.”
“Ah, a good comrade, with good advice. Make sure you keep people like that around.”
* * *
Cheater obtained a map the usual way. An NPC Cartographer sat him down on a squeaky chair, then showed him several sheets of paper with casual drawings of the clusters closest to the settlement. Cheater requested everything east of the village.
The character Cattail is offering medium-detail and poor-detail maps of the following clusters:
A long and boring list of cluster numbers followed, along with the time the NPC had spent
in those clusters and the varying levels of detail the maps possessed. Once he agreed to the upload, his head spun for a moment. He returned to his senses to see Cattail holding out a bottle of water.
“This will help.”
“I’m fine, thank you. Is there anyone here who sells maps of farther clusters? I need everything east of here.”
The NPC shook his head. “Not that I know of.
There is too much blackness to the east, so we do not travel there. No one travels there.”
“Yeah, black clusters are bad...”
“But if you ever need maps of the West, I have those. I traveled there often before moving here.”
“Thanks, but I’m not interested in going west.”
“If you really insist on hunting east, check in with Smith. He’s our doubler, which means he always needs nodium, and the black and gray clusters are the only place to find that. So he might know a secret or two about those places. And if you agree to bring him some nodium, he might give you some very useful information. He’s out of the stable today, though, away on something important. Expect him back in a few days.”
Cheater processed this new information. Perhaps it was a dead end, but he might get a quest from this Smith. That brochure for newbies and everyone he had spoken to all said that you did well to keep an ear out for NPC hints like this one.
Chapter 22
Life Seven: The Trump Card
A lone raffler with its characteristically twitching gait, exhibited by infecteds at low levels of development, walked along the double yellow line running the middle of the narrow road. The creature’s muscles rippled and rolled underneath its rough yellowish-brown skin, decorated with a network of tiny wrinkles. Its tongue protruded now and then from its swollen mouth, licking the parched lips crowning its growing jaws. Its head was in constant motion atop its massive neck, turning from right to left and back again. Continuous scanning of the area to make sure it wouldn’t miss anything that was potentially delicious. The beast’s ears and nostrils wriggled along with its eyes, too.
