Gathering Strength

by Aaron Jay

  The number of items I needed to donate was massive. That wasn’t even how the Party screwed people though. They screwed you because the total donation points you needed to complete the quest would change. The total was a moving target that changed depending on how many people currently had the quest and the general level of productivity in the Game. Worse, it also went up with your level.

  You could increase each donation’s impact by refining items. Iron ore was worth less than iron ingots. Iron ingots were worth less than iron items. Iron items that were smithed to higher levels of craftsmanship were worth more again. Some people went for quality to finish the quest, mastering different crafting skills. Others went for quantity, harvesting anything they could, anywhere they could, donating it all without slowing down to alter it. Despite all the debates over which approach was superior, the question remained unresolved. Bottom line, no one of either persuasion left the Crib in large numbers.

  And it wasn’t like the Clans didn’t get their cut. Want to focus on crafting? They controlled all the settlements where you could safely do things like brew potions without having a giant spider leap out at you. Also, you are going to need someone to collect the materials. That will cost you. Want to wander around collecting mats? You are going to need to get new equipment, replace your potions and scrolls, find food, a place to sleep. Safe places to trade and resupply were all in settlements owned by some subsidiary of the Party. They used to say nothing was certain except death and taxes. Well, we respawn now but taxes are still certain.

  It usually took players years to finish this quest, if they ever did.

  Sighing, I wondered if maybe it was time to head back to the real world. I had been stuck in that damned dungeon for weeks and I had one of four more impossible tasks in front of me. I needed to figure out how I was going to beat Maya and our bet.

  Also, I shouldn’t forget that my actual body was in a public pod station controlled by the GMs. Who knew how long GM Pulling was on shift at the station?

  Looking at my quest completion bar, I felt like I was accomplishing nothing here at the moment. Scratch that. I was accomplishing .00375% of my goals. So not quite nothing, just almost nothing.

  Taste of a bugle’s call

  The feel between my shoulder blades of the varied reds in a bowl of cherries

  Tiny fireworks popping in and out of existence as I saw the sound of glass shattering

  My senses reconnected to the places where they were supposed to go, and I was back inside the pod at the public station. Kinesthesia used to be a sign of neurological dysfunction. Now it was just a game-loading screen.

  The cover slid off and I was out.

  “How did it go?” asked GM Pulling.

  She was as attractive as I remembered but she looked like she could use a good night’s sleep.

  “Ok. Good even. Sort of. The Eastmans can’t get at me for the moment,” I said. I thought of Jude’s dying smile and shook my head. “Have you been watching over me the whole time?”

  She grunted noncommittally and gave me room to clamber out of the pod.

  “I didn’t want to leave dealing with you to anyone else. Too much temptation to do something unethical about you. Dealing with a Boone is apt to get you fired or exiled to a post like this,” she said.

  She really did look almost as tired as I felt. Her brown hair wasn’t messy but somehow it didn’t look exactly as put together as I had seen it in the past. It was pushed back and I could see her ears. They were small and delicate looking. I think I had been alone in a mine for a bit too long since I was finding her ears kind of endearing.

  Shaking my attention away from her ears, I thought about what she had just said. Her ex-partner had gotten fired after trying to fit me for a slave collar. He made his choices and got in bed with the Eastmans and it had bitten him on the ass in the end. She had gotten stuck in this dead-end station.

  “Sorry you are having some career setbacks,” I said with just a trace of edge.

  If she heard that slight edge she pretended to ignore it.

  “Yes. My career seems to have led me here,” she said sweeping in the empty public pod station. “Not a lot of opportunity for career advancement or meaningful work.”

  A tingle of fear went up the back of my neck. The easiest way for her to get her career moving in the right direction again was to put a quiet word in the right ears.

  “Uh huh.” I said.

  “Hungry?” she asked offering me a meal pack.

  “No,” I fibbed. I was hungry but I needed a few more minutes to readjust to being back in the real world. Eating food was too visceral after going straight from battling giant spiders through the sensory weirdness of log out.

  “Can I have some water, though?”

  She handed me a water cannister. Which I started draining.

  “So, I thought of a way you could help me out with my career problems.”

  Water sputtered as I coughed.

  “Sorry. What?” I asked once I had gotten my throat clear.

  “I thought you could help me out with my career problems,” she repeated.

  Looking around I didn’t see any GMs or Eastmans lying in ambush. I could only think of one way I could be of help to her, and asking my permission to inform the Eastmans seemed an unlikely way to go about cashing in that particular lottery ticket. Still, just a minute ago I had been ambushed by a giant spider. I had been jammed into a pit by my best friend and a cabal of the most powerful people in my world. My social interactions were apt to be a bit muddled. She picked up on my heightened anxiety level.

  “I’m not going to turn you in to the Eastmans. And why would I tell you if I was going to do that?”

  “Sorry, trust issues. I don’t know you that well and your uniform throws me,” I said.

  “You want me to take off my uniform?” she asked with 99% deadpan rejection.

  Startled, I met her eyes, which startled me even more. Was there 1% something else in what she said? Life and death struggles, even virtual ones, get your adrenaline pumping. Whatever was in her eyes I couldn’t suss it out in the brief amount of time I managed to look before chickening out and looking away.

  “What? No. Sorry.” I said reflexively.

  “You know you have apologized like four times since we started talking.”

  Using all the willpower I had developed in the mines I somehow managed to not say “Sorry” in response. I took a deep breath.

  “GM Pulling, it strikes me that among all the other reasons that people don’t typically use the public pods to play, a huge part of it has to be how hard it is to be fighting one second, then logging out and making polite conversation right after. Can you give me a little space for a second?”

  “Yes. We are actually counseled to keep that in mind when working these positions. Let me apologize. You Boones just seem tougher than most. Sorry.”

  Ah. A glimmer of what she wanted came to me. I stretched a bit and just looked around at this dumpy little section of the real world while I mulled the idea over.

  “What do you think I can do for you?”

  She sucked in her breath.

  “I was hoping you could introduce me to your father,” she said.

  I had guessed right. Nice to know my father wasn’t the only one in the family with a few brain cells to rub together.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Hear me out.”

  “We haven’t known each other for very long. And looking over our relatively short acquaintance I can’t see how you figure that I owe you anything.”

  “I watched over you. Kept my mouth zipped about where you were. I’ve taken overtime and swapped shifts to keep your playing here confidential,” she argued.

  “Things are pretty screwed up when you not abusing your uniform or stopping your colleagues from doing it means I owe you.”

  She smiled. It really was a nice smile.

  “Hello. We live in a postapocalyptic hell hole. Things are screwed up.”
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  “You don’t know what you are asking,” I said turning away.

  “This isn’t just about my career. You are right. Things ARE screwed up. Me not abusing my uniform shouldn’t be something you owe me for. But I didn’t. You want only those who play the Party’s game to succeed? If I do the right thing as a GM, don’t you have some sort of obligation to help?”

  “You brought me in with Arneson. You walked me into that jail pod,” I reminded her.

  “I did as much as I could within my orders.”

  “Just following orders, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said earnestly.

  Goddamn no one knows any history anymore.

  “’Just following orders’ was an excuse that the… never mind. I was wrong to say that. Damned Godwin’s Law,” I muttered.

  She clearly didn’t understand what I was on about but my trailing off gave her an opportunity to keep making her case.

  “Wait. Just wait a second.”

  She was weighing something in her mind. Her lips pursed around words she was holding back for some reason.

  After giving her a moment to decide one way or another I gave up and started to leave. I had a bet to win. I just wanted to get back to my apartment, have a shower, sleep for a bit and hope my unconscious could help me figure out some new strategies to get back in the game and win my bet.

  Now that I had finished off the instance I thought I could play at my place without being interrupted. At least until Maya and her mom figured out a new line of attack. Endearing ears or no, I needed to stay focused.

  “I think there has been an incursion. For all I know, maybe more than one,” Pulling said to my back as I walked to the exit.

  My eyes whipped around to hers. She met them levelly--anything humorous or flirtatious was long gone. We hadn’t had an incursion of wild nano past the barrier since I was a child. Over a decade without anyone being disintegrated or even more horrifically consumed and… and altered into something… other. My mind couldn’t help but bring up a flash of the last time I saw my mother. I put that image back in its box and sealed it away.

  “The GMs and the Party are keeping this hushed up but I think the barrier was breached. I think wild nano is inside the walls. You have to let me talk to your father.”

  Damn it. I really didn’t have time for the world to end.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The last time I had walked these streets with someone, it had been with Jude, my ex-best friend. One upside of going to my father’s was that I could avoid heading back to my apartment, where I half hoped and half dreaded I might run into Jude. He had betrayed me. I had killed him. Given that he had betrayed me in reality and I had only killed him in the Game, I think he was still the son of a bitch between the two of us. So, even finding out that the world might be ending again has its silver linings. It is the perfect excuse to avoid unpleasant social interactions. On the other hand, some self-destructive part of me wanted to confront him. He had been my best friend.

  Setting Jude aside, I thought of another happy aspect to GM Pulling’s revelation. If we all died, I thought I could also claim to have won my bet with Maya. I wouldn’t have lost anyway. I could claim I went out a winner.

  Our journey through the empty city was quiet. Both of us were consumed with our own thoughts. She had refused to tell me any details, saying that she would only tell the great man himself, my father, Numitor Boone. An incursion was about the only thing that would have made me interrupt my father’s self-chosen isolation. If you are only going to tell one person about feral AI and wild nano breaching our safety, my father would be the guy. So we walked on in silence through dead streets. After a few blocks, it suddenly struck me that walking with her without speaking didn’t feel awkward.

  Even before we made it up to the top of the steps of my father’s house, ArchE, my father’s AI assistant, had opened the door. He was one of only a handful of such beings allowed inside humanity’s last bastion.

  “Miles. GM Pulling. Is Miles an object of official interest again?” he asked.

  “No. No, he isn’t,” Pulling reassured.

  “Hi ArchE. I’ve brought GM Pulling here to see my father,” I said.

  He pretended to be surprised and take a moment to think about how to handle the situation. Not that he hadn’t been surprised or hadn’t needed extra cycles to decide how to handle the situation. Only we wouldn’t have been able to perceive the delay, which could reasonably be measured in Planck time, without his pretension.

  “Numitor Boone is not home to visitors. He most especially is not home to visitors wearing GM white and blacks,” he began.

  “It’s important,” I tried to interrupt while Pulling nodded in agreement.

  “But come in,” ArchE continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Miles can talk to his father. You can wait in the parlor, GM Pulling. Some aggravation might do him good.”

  He led us inside. Instead of heading into my father’s room he took us into what we called the parlor. I knew that this room was shielded and had a bevy of hidden devices designed to vet visitors. It also had some comfortable chairs and a small sofa. Giving Pulling a nod, I left her with ArchE to keep an eye on her and made my way to my father’s room.

  Entering, I saw my father propped up in the purpose-built bed that took up most of this rather large room. I looked him over, which takes some looking given his massive size. As far as I could tell his condition was stable and there had been no overt changes or growth since the last time I saw him. His mutation might not be acting up, but his mood definitely was.

  We hugged because that is our ritual, but I knew that my father was irritated with me.

  “Have you decided on the name for the baby?” he growled at me.

  Here we go.

  “Excuse me?” I responded.

  “I assume that the only reason you would disturb my retirement and bring a GM to my home without permission or notice is due to the application of official sanction. Yet, ArchE informs me this is not the case. If her visit isn’t professional I must assume something personal and profound. You know I despise unannounced visitors of any sort. A representative of what we could laughably call our government most especially. GM Pulling is attractive and of an age for you. So, I put the most acceptable spin on your disturbance that I can. You have decided to present me with a grandson and the next heir to our noble lineage. Frankly, I might have wished that you were under official compulsion and brought her here against your will.”

  He really was irked. Part of me couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t wanted me to play the Game. I had moved out and jumped into the game despite his arguments against it--one of which was that he would be dragged back into dealing with the rest of society if I did. Here I was interrupting his solitude yet again. Still, he should know I wouldn’t do such a thing lightly.

  “We were thinking an old Testament name like Shadrach or Abednego. If not that then Gygax Asimov Robinson Pournelle. We could call him GARP for short,” I said blandly.

  “Gygax was a genius but a terrible author of anything other than games. Gerrold or Gaiman would have been more appropriate,” he corrected. “But, you clearly have lost your wits and have brought her here for reasons of business. I refuse. You are not compelled, traduced or under duress. My paternal responsibilities do not run to constantly holding your hand as you play the Game and the games surrounding it. Your filial responsibilities most especially do include respecting my preferences as to who I allow in my home. Get her out!”

  The more my father yelled and indulged his theatrical and dramatic impulses, the more I had learned to respond with aplomb and a bit of snark.

  “I’m sorry. Were you about to step out and do a bit of gardening? Some shopping errands?” I asked my bed-ridden father.

  “Miles. If you think you can pester and needle me into submitting, think again. It has been some years since you were small and cute enough to get your way with such tactics.”

  “Well, now neither of us is small
or cute. Seriously, father. I’m sorry to disturb you. Truly. You may recall but I have a bet I need to win, yet here I am. I can’t afford to waste my time any more than yours. You need to talk with her.”

  “There are only a few scenarios under which I would agree that I need to speak with a GM.”

  “Well, there is no baby. So, it is one of the other ones.”

  He looked at my face. He is so large that sometimes being examined by him is what I suspect people felt when a whale or other large cetacean took a gander at a deep sea diver intruding on the denizens of the ocean. A massive intelligence that doesn’t look much like us but holds some bit of the human soul. My father put his bluster and irritation aside and looked at me and used his big brain. He realized what kinds of scenarios would make me bring Pulling to see him. Irritation was replaced with wariness, weariness and sadness.

  “Alright, Miles. Bring her to the office.”

  I left my father’s room, went across the hall and back into the parlor where Pulling was chuckling about something ArchE had said to her. For an aged and unknowably foreign intelligence housed in a synthetic shell, he was really a funny and charming guy. When she had come into the house she had been obsessing about the world ending and about meeting a man who I got the feeling she both admired and feared. Despite that, within a few minutes ArchE had her chuckling.

  “He has agreed to talk with you. I can’t promise he will help,” I said sitting down in the chair across from her. Pulling gave a short sharp nod. She started to get up.

  “Not IRL. Virtual,” I corrected her. She eased back down, relieved, I think, not to do this in person.