by Brian Simons
She was relieved when the elevator door opened and a live person emerged. He had light brown skin and long black hair combed backward from his forehead. “Coral,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand. “I’m Hector. Follow me.”
They rode the elevator to the top floor in silence before Hector led Coral to a conference room with a long table. At the front of the room was a buffet of lunch food — sandwiches, wraps, pasta salad, and a platter of cookies and brownies for dessert.
“Please help yourself,” Hector said.
Coral wanted to turn her nose up at the buffet, but her stomach revolted at the thought. It let out a long, low sound like a creaky door opening slowly. She was too hungry to turn down the free food.
The conference room door swung open as two more men entered. Coral set her plate and a glass of water onto the table as the larger of the two bounded up to her. Her only thought was that his nose was too small for his round pink face.
“Coral,” he said, extending his hand.
She had barely held out her hand when he grabbed it, squeezed it hard, and shook it fast. “My name is Domin Ansel. I run this place. You’ve already met Pérez, and this,” he gestured to the man that had walked in behind him, “is nobody. Sit down.”
Domin sat across from her and leaned forward. “So?”
“So, what?” Coral asked.
“So, say thank you, first of all. I replaced your broken visor. Those bad boys retail for $100 each. We give you the first one free, but after that you’re on your own. Next time you go around telling people to break their equipment, think about how expensive it’s going to be for them when they actually do.”
Coral had sent out a message encouraging people to break their visors, and she wasn’t sorry for it. “You should replace them all for free. They were faulty.”
The smile left Domin’s face. “Look, Coral, we can be friends but we don’t have to be. Breaking your visor violated your contract with us, and encouraging others to do the same is legally actionable.”
“What contract?” Coral said.
“You,” Domin said, snapping his fingers. The unnamed man slid a paper toward Coral. It looked like the insert that came in the Travail Online Starter Kit. One paragraph was circled in yellow highlighter.
Trade Secrets. The Travail Online Starter Kit (“Starter Kit”) contains proprietary nanotechnology, nanotechnology delivery, bluetooth, infrared, and wireless communications technology owned by Arbyten, Inc. By proceeding to use Travail Online (“Travail”), you agree not to analyze, deconstruct, or destroy this technology, and not to provide information on the form or function of this technology to anyone other than Arbyten, Inc. or its agents.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Coral said. “It’s my visor. I broke it, and if it matters that much to you, I’ll just keep using the broken one. Here.” She dug her new visor out of her backpack and slid it across the table.
Domin slid it back. “I’m not looking for trouble, Coral. Quite the opposite. I’d like you to start recording video of the wonderful things people can do in Travail. We’ll post it online, with your handle attached to it, to show the world how much you love what you do for a living.”
“Remind me why I would help you sugarcoat what’s happening in Travail?” Coral asked.
“Because,” Domin said, pushing back from the conference table and walking toward the buffet. “You’re not the only member of the Vipond family that loves working for me.”
“Are you threatening my parents now?” Coral asked. Last she heard from them, they had taken a job in Sierra Leone, teaching English to people that wanted to work in Arbyten’s offshore customer service call center.
“Of course not,” Domin said with half a cookie in his mouth. “Who’s threatening? You, lawyer, did I threaten anybody?”
“I wouldn’t define it that way, no,” the unnamed man said.
“All I’m saying,” Domin said, “is that it’s best for everyone if you cooperate. Send your footage to Pérez and he’ll make sure it gets the attention it deserves. You have until midnight tonight to send in your first video. End of discussion.” Domin grabbed three more cookies from the dessert tray and walked toward the door. The lawyer followed him out.
When the door closed, Hector put his hands behind his head and reclined in his seat. “Charming, isn’t he?”
“You guys have some gall,” Coral said.
“I’m sorry for how we dragged you in here,” Hector said, “but I’d like to talk with you about this video recording business.”
“I’m tired of talking,” Coral said, wrapping her sandwich in a napkin and picking up her backpack.
“Fine,” Hector said. “I get it. There’s a car waiting to take you home. But you could stay for a while if you wanted to.”
Coral took a step toward the door. Hector continued speaking. “Then you’d have time to log in for the Death Festival. That black car has phone chargers and free bottles of water, but it doesn’t have wi-fi.”
Coral stopped in her tracks. The festival would start soon, and she was a long drive from Philadelphia.
“I’m not holding you hostage,” Hector said. “You’re free to leave. But if you choose to stay you can have my office for as long as you need it. There’s a small couch. When you’re done, though, I’ll want five minutes of your time. That’s all I ask.”
Another ultimatum. She hated the idea of logging into the game in enemy territory. She’d be oblivious to whatever else happened around her until she logged out again.
“Fine,” Coral said, “but I don’t want your couch. I’ll take the floor.”
12
Coral logged in and immediately fell three feet. Varta, Aga, and Ernest looked down at her.
“Did the sinkhole implode even more?” she asked.
“No,” Aga said, “that was us. We may have gotten carried away.” Coral stood up and saw huge mounds of dirt around the edge of the sinkhole and a cleanly dug tunnel that led toward the Ogrelands.
“I helped!” Varta said. She was covered in dirt, head to toe. She must have been digging with her bear claws the whole time.
“I, uh, supervised?” Ernest said. The three women stared at him. “No, I did absolutely nothing.”
“Everyone take a mask,” Coral said, handing out mud masks. Each mask looked a little different, but they all had the same effect: lowering Diplomacy and improving Strength. Coral didn’t have much use for either trait, but she knew Varta would benefit from the Strength boost. More importantly, the mask would hide her face from any elves that kept watch. Anything that reduced the likelihood of getting caught would help.
“Why does the elf queen care if humans go into the Ogrelands, anyway?” Ernest asked.
“She’s trying to take over the world,” Coral said, “or something like that. Keeping the races separate prevents us from teaming up against her. It doesn’t help that the ruler of the human kingdom has a similar agenda of his own.
“All I want to do is sell these mud masks,” Coral said. And make Travail propaganda films to save my parents’ lives, she thought.
The four crouched low and climbed through the long tunnel into the Ogrelands. When they climbed out of the other end, the full aroma of the ogres’ home hit Coral like a brick in the face. This was a land where soap was a four-letter word.
Ernest held his fist under his nose. “This place certainly has character.”
The Ogrelands were a sprawling metropolis of canvas tents, and huts made from the hides of random animals. Aga’s tunnel had taken them close to the center of the ogres’ kingdom, where the older tents were yellowed and encrusted with decades’ worth of grime. The newer tents further from the city’s center were not without stains, but they hadn’t accumulated the same respectable patina as their more vintage counterparts.
“First, the tannery!” Varta yelled. Her voice was partly muffled by the mud mask that clung to her face. Coral followed her to a tent that smelled, if not worse, at least different
than the other tents. The air hung heavy with a scent like motor oil and caustic chemicals.
Inside, several large animal skins sat on a rack while a broad-shouldered ogre scraped fur from a hide draped over his knee.
“Excuse me,” Coral said. “How much to tan this?”
The ogre snatched the cheetah pelt from her and marveled at it. “This is exquisite. Who prepared this?”
“I did,” Coral said.
“No trace of blood or sinew. You are quite skilled. I could provide you 500 experience points in exchange for more of these pelts, pretty much forever. What do you say?”
Coral gave it only a second’s thought. A repeatable quest, consisting of killing beautiful cats, disemboweling their corpses, and scraping the guts off their pelts? No thanks. Not for only 500 XP.
“Thank you, perhaps another time,” she said.
The ogre shrugged. “Tanning this will cost 20 gold.”
“Ah,” Coral said. She had cashed in all of her coins after selling the gold bars, and only gathered two gold coins since then. “Would you please start tanning it? I’ll pay for it when I come back.”
The group left the tannery. Coral took a deep breath of not-so-fresh air and regretted it. The local aroma stuck to the roof of her mouth and the back of her throat.
“I need to raise some funds,” Coral said, turning to Ernest. “Want to help me peddle these masks?”
“Sure,” he said, taking a stack and walking away.
“Mud masks!” Coral yelled, holding a stack of the flat, brown items in her hand. “Get your mud masks! Hide your boring face in time for the festival!” A third of the players and NPCs in this area wore costumes made from bones, fur, and body paint to look like beasts and demons. Coral focused on the players that hadn’t dressed up yet.
After five minutes, she had sold one mask for three gold coins. The message boards suggested that decorative masks sold well enough in the past, and Coral’s were more than decorative. They were legitimate armor with stat bonuses. In this economy though, selling anything was a challenge.
Unless you were Ernest, Coral thought.
“I sold out!” he yelled, sprinting back toward Coral.
“How?” Coral asked.
“I think the ogres were afraid to say ‘no’ to an elf. My face is covered in mud, but my pointy ears give me away.” He handed her a fistful of gold. After a minute with the tanner, she came back out of the tannery with the cheetah’s pelt in her bag.
Varta looked eager. “I can get started after the festival,” Coral said. This seemed to satisfy her for the moment. She started drumming on her armor again with her knuckles.
An announcement boomed through the city. “Congratulations again to the winners of this year’s Throw Games! You tossed or you lost! And now, final call for entrants to the annual pig eating contest!”
“There’s a pie eating contest?” Coral asked.
“No,” Aga said. “Pig eating.”
“Oh god,” Coral said. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I don’t know what you think it is.” Aga said, “I’m a Dirt Mage, not a mind reader. Let’s watch. My husband used to rank in the top three each year before he left.”
“Left for where?” Coral asked.
“Beats me,” Aga said, tightening her fists. “He just disappeared one day. Lousy, good-for-nothing, deadbeat man.” She looked down at her bare feet. “I loved him.”
“I’m so sorry,” Coral said.
Ernest leaned in close to Coral. “Damn,” he said, in a voice low enough that no one else would hear. “The NPCs in this game are so convincing.”
“Let’s head toward the contest,” Coral said. “There should be a good crowd there to sell mud masks to.”
As the group wound their way through the snaking corridors of randomly placed huts, the sound of a cheering crowd got louder. The open field at the center of the Ogrelands was packed with players and NPCs. Smaller tents lined the field, their flaps folded open to welcome customers inside for food, clothing, and other gear. One tent towered over the rest. It was two stories tall and deep enough to house thousands of ogres at a time.
The central field was laid out for the moment in a grid of small wooden pens, each holding a large pink pig and a larger green-skinned ogre. There were hundreds of them in there.
Coral scanned the contestants. “Sal!” she yelled. “Sal!” She left her mask on, but hoped he’d recognize her voice.
Eventually he looked up and waved at her. She’d have to catch up with him after the contest. For now, she had masks to sell.
“I’m out again,” Ernest said. Coral handed him another stack.
“I’ll have to cut you in on the profits,” she said, “for handling the retail side of this operation. I can’t get anyone to pay attention to me.”
“You smell too pretty,” Varta said. “No one wants to come near you.”
“Ah,” Coral said. “Thank you?”
Varta shook her head. It wasn’t a compliment.
Coral surveyed the crowd. The Ogrelands were alive with enthusiastic players and NPCs. Every last person without a mask had green skin, varying from the pale yellow-green of Aga, to the bold shamrock green of Varta, to the drab olive green of—
“Is that Bergg?” Coral asked. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Ugh,” Aga said. “You know Bergg?”
“Last time I was here,” Coral said, “I gave him a handful of juvensprig and he was supposed to make a jar of salve for me. I was chased out before I could collect it.”
“He probably sold it by now,” Varta said.
“But it wasn’t his to sell,” Coral said. Indignation rose in the back of her throat. She squelched it down again long enough to give Bergg the benefit of the doubt. “I’ll be right back.” Coral jogged toward Bergg.
“You said you would give me five gold!” a vendor yelled.
“That was before I knew you’d accept five gold,” Bergg said. He squinted his large eyes at the short man behind the selling table. “How about four? It’s just a silly little trinket.”
“It’s a working compass!” the vendor said. “If I say yes, you’ll chew me down to three gold!”
“Fine,” Bergg said. “Nine gold for two.”
“Bergg,” Coral said. He waved her off without looking at her.
“What do you need two compasses for?” the vendor asked.
“That’s my business,” Bergg replied.
“Bergg,” Coral said, more firmly than the first time. She took a step closer to him, hoping her two inches of height above his would grab his attention.
“Nine gold for two,” the vendor said. “Final offer.”
“But you made a good point. I really only have use for one, though I can’t give you four and a half gold coins,” Bergg said, “so let’s round down to four gold for one.”
“Bergg!” Coral yelled.
“What?” he asked turning toward her.
She pulled her mask aside. “I’m back for my jar of juvensprig salve.”
Bergg’s face blanched. “Of course, of course. I don’t quite have it at the moment though. You’ll have to give me some time to dig it up. Let me just finish my transaction.”
The vendor had scooped most of his wares into a nearby crate and was just placing a “Closed” sign on his table when Bergg turned toward him.
“I want my compass!” Bergg yelled, but the vendor ignored him and hurried off.
“What do you need a compass for?” Coral asked.
“To resell it,” Bergg said. “It’s worth at least six gold.”
All Coral could do was shake her head.
“Why don’t you enjoy the festival,” Bergg said, “and I’ll see if I can’t locate that little jar of salve.”
“You better not disappear,” Coral said. “I gave you enough juvensprig to make two jars of that stuff and let you keep one of them. It was a fair deal. I just want what’s mine.”
A loud buzzer sounded from
behind her as the pigpens in the central event field closed, locking the ogres and pigs in place for the contest. Varta waved Coral over to join her. “I’ll find you later,” she said.
As Coral headed back toward Varta, a second buzzer rang. Sal and the other ogres responded by dropping to their knees in front of massive empty troughs. Coral wasn’t sure she wanted to watch Sal race against a hundred ogres to eat a live pig, but she couldn’t take her eyes away.
Then each of two troughs in the pens filled up with a giant mound of food. There were pies, heads of cabbage, and a few questionable items like raw meat and moldy bread. Ogres and swine dived into their food piles headfirst.
“So they don’t have to eat the pig?” Coral asked. Varta and Aga laughed at her.
“No,” Aga explained, “they have to eat faster than the pig.”
“That’s a relief,” Coral said. She brought up her settings menu and found a panel devoted to video. She selected record and a small red dot started blinking in the corner of her vision. If players weren’t going to rip the intestines out of pigs with their teeth, this might be an okay time to make a video.
Sal buried his face in food, as did the pig he sat next to. It took a few minutes, but ogres started jumping to their feet, claiming their place among the winners. Sal was one of the first dozen to finish his trough.
He vanished from his pigpen and reappeared on the outskirts of the event field. The ogre announcer running the event handed Sal a small scroll, then Sal turned and ran toward Coral with his arms outstretched.
“Coral!” he yelled, “I’m so glad to see you!”
She didn’t want to get slathered in food sludge, but she also didn’t want to hurt Sal’s feelings. She let him hug her and then she introduced him to her friends while she wiped brown chunks of food off her shirt.
“Grum ate better than you,” Aga said, “but you still eat faster than a starving pig so I offer you my respect.”
