Gunslinger Moon

by Holly Lisle

  “I think before we do that, I need to take a break. Will you meet me at Snarky’s in a few minutes?”

  Chapter Ten

  Jex

  I’ve lost track of real-world time, and I need to find out how what I’m doing in the game world correlates with what’s going on in the real world.

  So as soon as I’m on the boardwalk outside Bill’s Dry Goods store, I say, “Save and quit game.”

  And I find myself back in Bashtyk Nokyd’s room.

  I take care of my necessities. Shower, shave, void, eat.

  “How long have I been playing?” I ask Hirrin, who looks up from scanning the notebook.

  He shrugs. “An hour? No more than that.”

  So game time runs faster than real time.

  “Any success?” Hirrin asks.

  “A little,” I say. “I’ve located the B or F Principle. When I go back in, I’ll be applying it, and hoping to find out what Faster Horse or Bigger Gun means. How about you?”

  Hirrin sits down across the table from me. “I’m learning a lot. The old man’s notebooks are full of questions he asks himself. And then questions he asks about the questions, and then little ideas he writes down that answer little pieces of the questions. And then all of a sudden he’ll write down an example of something in the real world that demonstrates a piece of the answer to the main question he’s asked.”

  Hirrin gets something to eat from the reconsta dispenser. It smells good, but nowhere near as good as Long Tall Ted’s campfire cooking.

  He starts into his meal. “Going through and seeing him work, seeing him develop his ideas and test them against reality, throw out anything that can’t be proven in the real world, and then refine the ideas into a principle — it’s like being taught how to think. How to think better, anyway. It’s changing me, allowing me to look at what was wrong with my first life, and to see why it was wrong.”

  “That seems contradictory,” I say. “If Nokyd insisted on reality being the standard by which his ideas passed or failed, why would he test them in a video game?”

  Hirrin considers before answering. “At the front of every notebook, he writes this little reminder to himself. ‘If your theory can’t withstand the test of reality, your theory is wrong. If your question can’t withstand the test of reality, ask a different question.’”

  I look at him, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

  “You’re asking the question, Why did Bashtyk Nokyd play a video game to test his theories? If he could not test his theories by playing the game, that wasn’t why he was playing the game. You’re asking the wrong question.”

  This makes sense. But it raises a new problem. “Then why was he playing the video game?”

  “I’ll bet that’s the right question.” Hirrin sighs. “It’s a pity no one asked him.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Hunter Studly

  I go back into the game in a thoughtful mood.

  I owe a dead philosopher for setting me on a path to earning my own life lived as a free human. If I hadn’t been chosen for this odd mission, I would not have a chance to become a Longview crewman.

  Debt, I have come to understand, needs to be repaid. Repayment of debt is a form of honor, of acknowledging the value of someone else’s life and effort in helping your life.

  And I owe my fellow player, Ted, for helping me find my way to answers that will let me become crew, and perhaps even contribute to the freedom of folks trapped in the hell that had once held me.

  Privately I ask Retha, “Who is Ted?”

  She says, “I have no access to real-world identities. The only way I know you or any player is by your username and your biometric data. Which I am forbidden to track into the real world. That’s for your protection, as well as to protect the privacy of other players.”

  I sigh. “So you don’t know if or when Ted met a man named Bashtyk Nokyd in the game.”

  “No one with the username Bashtyk Nokyd has ever played Cowboys Versus BEMs.”

  Well, no. Of course he hadn’t. He would have had a username, too. I swear at the efficiency of protected privacy, and how it is keeping me from information that could save a vast and suffering swath of humanity.

  Retha says, “However… all players give their permission for use of their developed characters when they aren’t playing so that I can set up appropriate matches even when live players are unavailable. If you can locate his username, you can meet any character’s sharable avatar simply by requesting a match with that player. If the live player is not available or with other players already, you’ll be matched with his or her avatar.”

  I have missions to do, but I decide to dig through Bashtyk Nokyd’s saved games to see if I can come up with his username.

  And then I step out of the paused game into my saved point, and start down the boardwalk to Snarky Bitterman and the New Missions building, and hear the swinging doors behind me creak.

  “So I’ll catch up with you after you’ve done your necessaries,” Long Tall Ted says, and I jump.

  And realize that time must not have continued in the game while I was showering and eating and talking with Hirrin.

  Which doesn’t make sense. I’m playing in a Play-Together, which means the other player is not pausing when I have to leave —

  Inside my mind, Retha says, “Long Tall Ted is not currently playing, so you’re with his avatar.”

  And I’m amazed. I didn’t imagine the avatars would be so good.

  “Changed my mind, Ted,” I say. “I’m good to go. Let’s get that faster horse.”

  He chuckles. “Already decided, have you?”

  “Absolutely. The evil beast I’m riding now makes walking a misery. I want a horse like yours.”

  “First,” Ted says, “You’re not going to get a horse like mine. The faster horse is one step up from your current horse, and only slightly less miserable than the one you have. Second, is your comfort the best reason to make a choice?”

  I’ve come to discover that if he’s asking me the question, I’ve already given the wrong answer, and he’s giving me the chance to rethink it. But I don’t know why the faster horse is wrong.

  I decide that’s something I can ask.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  And he asks me another question.

  “What problems, if any, did you run into with the rats?”

  I grin. “After I figured out that I had to shoot them from that shelf at the top of the barn, none.”

  A tiny sigh escapes him. “And why did you have to shoot them from that shelf?”

  “Because they killed me the first time…”

  Right. It’s easy to put the hard parts of the game out of your mind after you beat a mission, but important not to forget what you had to do to get where you are.

  “They outnumbered me,” I tell him, “and while I was backing and shooting as fast as I could, I couldn’t shoot all of them before they took me down.”

  We walk along the boardwalk, spurs jangling when they hit the wood. He says nothing. It’s a very waiting kind of silence.

  “But,” I argue, because in the game I’m still tender in uncomfortable places from riding that vile four-legged monstrosity, “a bigger gun isn’t necessarily a faster gun.”

  “That’s true,” Ted says. And then he doesn’t say anything else.

  We walk into the New Missions building, and a man with a green dot over his head and the name Snarky Bitterman beneath it — a man whose face says no kind word has ever exited it — snarls, “What do you want, fool?”

  And I can’t tell if he’s looking at Ted or at me.

  “I need…” I pause. Think, because this turns out to be a game in which thinking is more important than I expected. “Would you recommend the Bigger Gun or the Faster Horse as my next mission?”

  And Snarky looks surprised. “You’re asking my opinion, greenhorn?”

  “I am.”

  “How ‘bout that. A young’un with some manners and a
bit of smarts. Well, all right. Can you outrun a bullet?”

  “Of course not,” I say.

  “Mmmm-hmmm. Can your horse outrun a bullet?”

  “My horse can’t outrun a rock.”

  And Bitterman laughs. I find this encouraging. He says, “Could a faster horse outrun a bullet?”

  “Well,” I say, seeing my imagined comfort disappearing into a long, grim ordeal with the current beast, “No. Not really.”

  “You’re going to be stepping into the path of some bullets, son,” Snarky says. “If it were me, I’d want to be doing it with something better than that pea-shooter that’s in your holster right now.”

  I nod. Try a little local in my answer. “I reckon I should go after the Bigger Gun, then. How do I sign up?”

  “Just say, ‘New mission.’ And when you finish it, come back here to pick up your bounty. Remember that missions that pay better are always more dangerous. You can select any mission that matches your level or lower, but not all missions will be wise to try the first time you go out.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “By the way,” Bitterman says, “I like that big cat o’ your’n. If you should find another like it while you’re out and about, I’d love to buy it from you. I’ll pay you forty gold.”

  “Forty?” I say.

  “We-e-e-ell… I’ve heard others are offerin’ you thirty, but I’d kind of like to have one as soon as possible.”

  Behind me, I hear Long Tall Ted mutter, “It figures. How was I supposed to know I should have saved the cat?”

  Bitterman glances over at him and says, “Well, howdy, Long Tall Ted. Nice to see you again. Haven’t you heard you always save the cat?”

  Out on the boardwalk again, Ted looks at the sky and says, “Retha, if everyone knows to save the cat but me, and I didn’t save the cat, how can I have the highest ever score in Kindness, Honesty, Reasonableness, and Heroism?”

  She says, “The introductory mission does not apply to your character. Players have not yet internalized the world’s rules, and many forget when they hear something big growling at them in the dark that yellow eyes can become either red or green. Most panic. You panicked, Ted. Hunter Studly didn’t. But the world doesn’t hold that first action as a definition of your character. It simply gives a high-end reward to those who maintain their calm.”

  And then she says something that surprises me. “In the early missions, you panicked and died more than ninety-five point three-seven-eight percent of all other gunslingers. Watching you gain skills was both educational and entertaining. I still find it remarkable that you died thirty-seven times in the introductory mission before figuring you needed to put distance between yourself and the rats.

  “Hunter Studly, on the other hand, shows both remarkable calm in the face of danger, and a level of toughness common to most of the gunslingers who enter the world from this hub.

  Long Tall Ted looks embarrassed. “We ought to be moving along now,” he tells me.

  So I say, “New mission.”

  The mission list appears in front of me.

  Miss Lucy’s Laundry - 10 gold [Level 1 Faster Horse]

  The Chicken Chaser - 15 gold [Level 2 Faster Horse]

  The Cave Thing - 10 gold [Level 1 Bigger Gun]

  One More Dark Corner - 15 gold [Level 2 Bigger Gun]

  Cats and Kittens - 70 gold, Farrier, Snarky Bitterman

  I look longingly at Miss Lucy’s Laundry, but select The Cave Thing.

  A red arrow appears in the sky. It will lead us to the mission location.

  Ted and I get our horses, and follow the arrow. He’s whistling.

  As well he might be. His horse is pleasant, his saddle is padded, and he’s on his way to a mission in which he already has a bigger gun.

  Me? I’m going to face something nastier than the rats that killed me, and I’m doing it with what Snarky Bitterman called a pea shooter.

  On the bright side, I didn’t die thirty-seven times before I figured out how to kill the rats. I almost snicker. Thirty-seven times.

  Then I imagine how I would have reacted had that happened to me, realize that if I hadn’t been playing the game as my job, I would have quit, and give Ted a sidelong glance. He looks happy.

  He died thirty-seven times in the intro mission. And didn’t quit. That’s a degree of persistence I have a hard time imagining.

  And it’s worth remembering. I have to figure he worked hard for that nice horse of his. For the gun in his saddle and both guns in his belt. And he’d probably died a lot more times on the way to getting them than I would.

  So I could not quit. No matter how tough things got, I could not quit, because to maintain the respect of the most honorable gunslinger ever to play this game, I needed to be willing to try again until I succeeded, no matter how many times it took.

  He sees me looking at him and says, “Nice job in there. I’ve discovered that survival is all about asking the right question, and then not ignoring the answer because it isn’t what you want to hear.”

  I stand in the stirrups to give myself some relief from the uncomfortable saddle. We’re out of town, riding down a track partially obscured by rolling balls of sticks, and the red arrow is already drawing closer to the ground.

  I see a rocky rise ahead of us.

  And decided to try the better question approach. “Any advice?” I ask Ted.

  He looks down at me and grins. “Good question. Have your gun out and loaded before you walk in, don’t walk all the way in, and as soon as you hear a noise, back out. Don’t turn and run.”

  He chuckles a little.

  “And save before you get off the horse.”

  I see the outline of the cave ahead of me now. It’s mostly hidden by a boulder, and the track we’re on veers well away from it.

  “You don’t want to come in with me by any chance, do you?”

  “Nope. Did this one myself. Took me eight times to get it right. With what I told you, maybe you can cut that down to four. But if I help you out on this one, I’ll get half your points and half your gold, and you won’t get a bigger gun until the second mission, which I discovered requires the bigger gun you get from this one. You’ll end up having to repeat this one. You don’t want to do that.”

  So we reach the spot where he says, “Save here.”

  I do. Dismount. Unholster my gun. Walk toward the cave.

  My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry, and I realize that I’m probably going to die. More than once.

  It’s not going to be pleasant.

  While I’m still well away from the cave, I see something big moving inside. I hear it growl.

  Two glowing red eyes blink once. Twice.

  And I shoot, emptying the gun between them, reloading as quickly as I can, fire six more shots, reload again, and realize that the two red dots are gone.

  Nothing in the game tells me the mission is over, though.

  I walk cautiously into the cave.

  Before my eyes can adjust to the darkness, I have an instant to hear the growl. Behind me.

  The screaming is mine, there’s pain and noise, and then I’m back on the horse.

  I look over at Ted.

  “What did I tell you?” Ted says.

  “I thought I’d killed it. I was going in to check.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “Have my gun out. Make sure it’s loaded before I walk in. Don’t walk all the way in. As soon as I hear a noise, back out.”

  He nods. “You listened, then. You just didn’t hear me.”

  I say, “I could see whatever’s in there from outside the cave.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “So I didn’t have to go to the cave entrance and then back away to shoot it. I just shot it from where I was.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I went into the cave to see if it was dead.”

  Ted gives me a long, careful look. “There are some things in life you already know to do. There are some
things in life you have to figure out on your own. And there are some things in life you can ask for some help with. Did I need to tell you to shoot the thing with the big red eyes?”

  “No. But I thought since you hadn’t mentioned it, maybe it hadn’t been there for you.”

  “It was there. I didn’t tell you anything about the parts of the mission every idiot gets right. But you have to learn to play the game on your own, and you have to have the chance to make your own mistakes and your own discoveries. The game’s like life that way. You’ve already discovered things in the game I never did, because you didn’t walk right up to the giant cat the first time you found it, have it kill you, and assume from then on that it was an enemy in disguise.

  “You’re a different player, and while you and I are both looking at the same world, we’re both seeing different things. For you to get the most out of the game, you have to think through every part of it. When I say, Don’t walk all the way into the cave, understand that when you find yourself in the situation where you might reasonably expect to walk into the cave safely, don’t do that. Step to the mouth of the cave, then back away with your weapon drawn and loaded.”

  Following his directions, I kill a second bear that was hiding in an alcove off to the right after I kill the first bear.

  I walk in to look at what I’ve killed, and discover that I have no way to collect resources from the bears the way Ted showed me, because I have no knife. So I start walking back to him to ask if he can help me. And just inside the cave door I discover a human skeleton. Wearing a broad-brimmed hat, a knife on a gun belt, and holding a gun bigger than mine in its bony hand.

  It wasn’t there when I walked in.

  I take the better gun belt that has the knife sheath, and the knife, and the bigger gun.

  At which point, the game gives me my mission notice.

  The Cave Thing - 10 gold [Level 1 Bigger Gun] COMPLETED

  I remember to gather all the resources from both bears.

  And then I think about what Ted said about different players seeing different things.

  I see darker shadows toward the back of the cave. Ted didn’t say anything about there being anything else to do in the cave, but I think I’ll just look around a little before I head back to Ted. I say, “Retha, do I have a way to get light in here?”