Gathering Strength

by Aaron Jay

There on the wall was my original Frank Frazetta illustration of John Carter. John Carter was transported via astral projection away from his earth to Mars, a brutal and barbaric world of adventure. So these days he would just be a regular working schmo. In the illustration all he had was a sword and a loin cloth. I was up on him in the clothes department, but he had it all over me with the sword. He also got Dejah Thoris. I didn’t have a hot martian bug lady like Dejah but I did know a GM who owed me a favor and was pretty cute. I’d gotten a night’s sleep, today I’d see the GMs in the person of GM Pulling, and at least I’d knock out some hours in the game at the public pod Pulling ran. That should be safe enough.

  Having a plan calmed me down. Worst came to worst, I’d at least spend some time talking with someone who didn’t want to murder or enslave me. Also, as I mentioned, she was cute.

  One thing that is top notch in my father’s home is the food. ArchE is an amazing cook. Really odd that someone who doesn’t eat or drink is so good at it.

  A dozen pancakes, two glasses of orange juice and a side of bacon and I felt ready to face things. The mood in the house with my father was awkward. We discussed what my next moves might be. He tried to help me think through some possible contingencies. The world’s greatest genius didn’t have any great solutions. I think his big brain was blocked a bit by guilt and embarrassment. Eventually, I told him I was going to go see Pulling and use the public pod. He nodded in return and we went off to our respective days.

  The public pod was right where I left it. Way the heck in the middle of nowhere. The idea of commuting to the pod from my father’s house was making the little spreadsheet in my mind that told me my daily speed with the gathering quest weep.

  GM Pulling looked up at me with her long oval face when I came in. At first she looked professional until she recognized me past Aabid’s bruises. Then she looked relieved. She finally settled on a mix of bemusement and sympathy. She had quite the expressive face.

  “Miles!”

  I said hello back. She started asking questions about the fire and my bruises. Pretty soon I had told her everything that had happened. I tried not to feel put out that she seemed more interested in Aabid’s weird implant than in his attempt to murder me.

  She asked if I wanted to file a report. My father and I had discussed it and decided that on balance it was a bad idea. I couldn’t know which GMs would help me and which would use it against me or inform on my whereabouts.

  “You are the only GM I know who I have some confidence won’t use it as an opportunity to conspire with the Eastmans against me. Maybe others would try to stop Aabid or anyone else from coming after me, but maybe they wouldn’t. At least you haven’t so far. Thank you for that. Why file an official report when the only GM I think I can count on already knows? Consider yourself informed.”

  She argued that without an official report she couldn’t do much about Aabid. His unusual strength and what I saw on his neck needed investigation. After most of humanity was killed, obvious signs of modification and implants were shunned and sometimes outright banned. We weren’t going to allow unfettered experimentation ever again. Until we would and killed ourselves again.

  I told her that the GMs had an arson they could investigate and if they wanted to know about the whole implants going crazy thing, they had all the opportunity they needed. This disagreement put a bit of a chill on our conversation.

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “A pod. How long can I stay here without anyone else finding out where I am?”

  “What’s wrong with playing from your father’s?

  “He is too paranoid to let me. Well, a good number of ‘they’s’ are out to get him, so he is whatever we call paranoia when they really are out to get you. Bottom line, I can’t play from there.”

  She looked at me with pity. I think she was shocked that my father wouldn’t let me play from his house. She couldn’t be more frustrated by that than I was.

  “I am on shift and can keep you safe for, lets see, seven and a little over half an hour,” she said. “I burned all the possible OT and shift swapping last week after your whole big dustup that got Arneson retired. You are welcome. I can’t cover for you any more than my regular shifts for a while. Sorry.”

  Ooph. This wasn’t going to work out.

  “I can’t play just during your shifts and make enough progress on my bet.”

  She shrugged helplessly. I moved toward the public pod. Better to play when I could than not. She went through the routine on her end. She started to say something a few times but kept shutting her mouth on whatever notion she wanted to share. I slipped into the pod and was halfway in when she looked like she had an idea that was either brilliant or terrible.

  “There is one place where you can play and you get anonymity,” she said. “But I don’t know if it is such a good idea.”

  “Where?”

  “The Pitts. Pitts Daemon and Web Design.”

  I hadn’t expected her to suggest that.

  “Well, that is an idea. Weren’t you just telling my father and I that that place is behind some sort of deadly breach? Aabid certainly is making me think you were on to something.”

  “Which is why this has benefits all around. I’m a GM. If I go, I won’t find anything out and my superiors will definitely hear about it. You are just a player. And you are your father’s son. You will know what to keep an eye out for. You will either get to play from there or you will be able to find out what is happening. Win-win.”

  “Sure, if we define win-win as me risking my life in order to help the GMs do the job they should be doing at the expense of playing as hard as I can to escape Maya Eastman. The deal is perfect.”

  She smiled at me. Smiled.

  “So, don’t do it. It’s the only place you can play anonymously that I can think of.”

  It was awkward lying half naked in the pod - my clothes under the layer of nano had dissolved. I didn’t want to talk about going to some sex palace with her while lying half naked in a pod. It’s no wonder Porky Pig had a stutter.

  I was shoved into a corner. I barked out a laugh because I had to. I had a choice of possible murder, enslavement, or going to play at a den of iniquity. Sitting awkwardly with my clothes half dissolved in front of GM Pulling, the first two options seemed easier to choose. Being a young man is harder than it seems.

  My father’s voice--well, actually a voice that was talking to me in math, which sounds exactly like my father in my head--was calmly pointing out that I was going to lose my bet if I could only play eight hours a day. I got out of the pod. At least my nano reformed into pants.

  “So, where is this place?” I asked GM Pulling.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I looked up at the building. It didn’t look like a den of iniquity, not that I had a clear idea of what such a thing should look like. Perhaps lots of neon, painted silhouettes of naked ladies and the words SEX! SEX! SEX! Plastered everywhere. Or maybe balconies with women barely wearing clothes importuning people to “Come on in, Cowboy!” I guess. No such decorative additions brightened up this building.

  Instead it looked like a bank, which is what the building used to be. And the bank itself was doing its best to look something like the Parthenon. It was all done up in neo-classical style. Tall doric columns, an imposing pediment and all the other bits and bobs of Greek architecture.

  For some reason, bankers in the old world thought that pretending their bank would look at home in ancient Rome or Athens would make them seem trustworthy with money. Given what the temple of Aphrodite at Corinth got up to with their hetarae (temple prostitutes--thanks for the classical education, Dad!) the look might make more sense as a den of iniquity than as a bank. Or, depending on your view of bankers, it might work for both. Did you know that the ancient Greek word for street prostitutes was porne? And some people say the classical world is dead and buried. People interact with classical Greek language and concepts each and every day, intimately.

&nbs
p; I squared my shoulders and went into the building. Above the door was a stone bas relief of a shield with the words: Community, Stability, Identity engraved upon it.

  “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to Pitts. I’m Ned Ruod. Your happiness is our desire. Your desire is our happiness,” was the warm greeting given me by the avuncular man smiling me into the lobby. His clothes were set to shirt with a tab collar and matching slacks. His eyes had smile crinkles and his lips were a liverish red. Mr. Nuod’s hair was perfectly silvery white. He spoke with a musical roundness ranging up and down the scale.

  The lobby was… calm. It was filled with neutral colors and lots of textures. Woven cloth and rugs and furniture upholstered with material that made you want to curl up on it with a good book. It just looked clean and comfortable. It felt way too wholesome to be a palace of decadence. This place pretending to be something it wasn’t set off all sorts of warning bells.

  Ruod gave me a large and easygoing smile that seemed remarkably genuine. I gave him a smaller one in return that I didn’t really mean.

  Given that I had never had a girlfriend and my father had curated all of the messaging that entered our home, I had no idea what to expect from a pornographic sex palace. Of course, I knew the mechanical basics of sex. And my father wasn’t some sort of prude. He just culled out all the programs and messaging that were either crassly commercial or intentionally propagandistic and political. It turned out that once all that was cleared away, there wasn’t much about sexual matters that made it across our transom. I had read tons of fantasy books. In the end I was pretty sure Robert E. Howard’s work was not a useful text for relations amongst the sexes. Sorry, Conan.

  There was definitely something going on in this room below the level of my conscious mind. Subtle scents were wafting through the air. My father had tried to train me to sense such manipulations. I was nowhere near as good at it as he was, but this was pretty overt. The music softly playing hid a sophisticated set of sub and transonic tones designed to make me feel warm and agreeable. I needed to get out of here and into a pod.

  The man in red continued to greet me.

  “I see you haven’t come to us before. Wonderful! Welcome, Mr…”

  “Boone.”

  “Boone? Greeting a new client is one of my favorite parts of the job. Wonderful! I can see that you are a bit nervous. But why? There is nothing to be nervous about.”

  He really did seem to want to put me at my ease. His eyes were filled with understanding.

  “I would just like a pod, please.”

  “Of course! Wonderful! Let’s just start an account and we will have you off into whatever fantasy or identity you can dream up. We are running a special on Classic Harems all month. Simply wonderful. Blackthorne, or the Daniel Black series. A run through The Wild Wastes? Truly, ever so wild. The ladies our designers created are wonderfully pneumatic. Wonderfully pneumatic.”

  “I’m not sure. I can browse once I’m in a pod, correct?”

  “Of course. Of course. Many of our clients like to select before they enter the pod. Time in our pods is a bit dear, isn’t it. But I like your thinking. For a first visit, browsing makes a lot of sense. So many wonderful options and choices. All wonderfully pneumatic.”

  I coughed and asked, “So, how much?”

  He presented a price listing for different types of memberships. The cheapest was the Gamma level - which covered nothing. It was the minimum necessary to use Pitts. Time in the pods and everything else was a la carte.

  “And I could play the Game from these pods, correct?”

  “You could. If you needed to, you could connect to the Game. We will still charge you for the time in the pod though,” he said disparagingly. He clearly didn’t like this idea.

  “It’s just that I thought I might stay for a few days. Saying I liked it.”

  “Oh you will, you will. Wonderful! A little vacation. What a wonderful idea. But you want to be able to check in on the Game off and on. I understand.”

  He then told me the cost in nano per hour to play at the Gamma level and I nearly choked. His face looked legitimately sad on my behalf.

  “Yes. It is quite dear,” he thought for a minute. “Usually only our Alpha level clients ever play from here.”

  After the GMs returned the nano I had used to try to bribe my way into a better roll-up, I had ended up with a lot more nano than most my age. Even with that, I could only afford about a month here. This place was more than “a bit dear.”

  Did I want to spend all my savings like this? Once it was gone, I’d be broke with no way to earn on the horizon.

  Weighing my choices, I tried to ignore Ruod looking at me expectantly. I noticed that on the wall there was a reprise of the motto that had been on the front of the building: community, stability and identity.

  He followed my gaze and his smile widened. “Community, Identity, Stability. That is our credo.”

  “What does it mean?”

  His lips stretched into an even wider grin.

  “We offer community with no judgment or obligation. A community of people all of whom are free to pursue whatsoever makes them happy! We offer identity. We can make your identity whatever you want! Care to be a woman? A wonderfully delicate japanese woman? Who wouldn’t? It sounds so nice, doesn’t it? A brutal Orc who rapes an elfin maiden? Try it! Why not? Oh. Did that disturb you? Ravishes the elf then. Is that better? Aren’t you quaint! You could be the brutal orc’s victim if that is more to your taste. It is all artificial, isn’t it? Doesn’t mean a thing. Just enjoy.”

  “And the stability thing?” I asked.

  “This is how we are able to offer stability to humanity. It is a difficult world we find ourselves in, isn’t it?” he sympathized. “We keep pressure from building up, don’t we? It’s just wonderful. We offer a little escape from responsibility and pain and difficulty. All work and no play makes Jack unstable, doesn’t it? Community, Identity, Stability.”

  I must not have been able to hide my skepticism well enough. He sighed and splayed his fingers, pushing his little speech away.

  “You should hear our founder Lilith explain it. I can’t do it justice. But I have seen it work. We are saving the world down here. One little heart at a time. You will see.”

  Despite Ruod’s warmth, I was put on my guard more from his little speech than I was from all of the warnings and cautions Pulling had given me once she had roped me into this. In the end I still didn’t have a choice. This place gave me the creeps and was going to bankrupt me, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My bet wouldn’t wait. I needed somewhere to play.

  Paperwork in our modern world takes almost no time. Lucky me that I didn’t have much time to rethink things or back out. Before I knew it, I had signed a contract with the Pitts.

  Ruod escorted me to a bank of elevators. It turns out that Pitts Daemon and Web design went down under the city.

  “Where is this elevator taking us?” I said after the ride had gone on for rather a longer time than I thought it would take to get to a basement. At times it felt like it moved in directions other than up and down.

  “Of course! All our Pitts offices connect. Down below we have expanded and built a wonderful little world of our own. Down in the under dark, Pitts goes on and on,” he hummed. “It’s much more convenient this way.

  The elevator went “Ding!” and the doors opened.

  Light pooled around us as we made our way through what had been a large underground parking structure. The light followed us, lighting our way ahead and darkening behind us. There were rows and rows of pods. There had to be hundreds if not thousands of them.

  Now and again we’d come across another customer either coming or going. They were mostly furtive, and the etiquette seemed to be to pretend we didn’t see each other. But every once in a while, we’d pass someone who wanted to meet my eyes and give us a toothy grin. As if they were proud to be here doing whatever it was that they were doing in the pods. Ruod seemed gleeful and pro
ud of those who were proud themselves for using the Pitts.

  We left the parking structure and moved through an old subway station also filled with pods.

  “Oh yes. We have spread our way through almost every underground tunnel, basement, or concourse the old city had to offer. People just love our services, and why wouldn’t they? We have just expanded through the darkness and deeps of our little city. Very convenient for our members. Whenever they want to find us, they can just go down below almost any building up top.”

  As we went along, I learned how higher-level memberships would get me access to pods in private or semi-private rooms and other amenities. There were even areas where one could get implants or have nano-resculpt for your body IRL. The scale of it all shocked me. I had no idea that this many people were spending this much time AWOL from the Game. Even at the price Lilith was charging, there were rows and rows of pods as far as the eye could see. If Ruod was to be believed, they offered an escape valve that kept our whole ball of wax from melting down. Did people really need to escape from the Game that badly? Well, my personal gaming experience hadn’t been the wonderful and rewarding adventure the Party was promising us players.

  Finally, we came to the pod that was for me. It was just like all the others I had passed, which made me happy. There was anonymity in numbers. Or so I hoped.

  I waited till Ruod’s figure was lost in the darkness before climbing into the pod. From the outside I couldn’t see any difference between it and the usual game pods, which meant nothing. Technology had long since passed the point when one could tell much of anything from how it looked to the human eye.

  Logging in, I found myself in a lobby. That word doesn’t really cover it. All those things I had expected to adorn the Pitts building back out in the real world were here in spades. Flashing signs and people in every state of dress and undress beckoned me to come with them.

  In the midst of all this was what should have been a typical options menu. It wasn’t standard. It forced you to wade through endless options and enticements just to find the Game. The Pitts had buried the Game login far down amongst all sorts of programs and scenarios. Some options were listed by theme. They truly did have all the fetishes and kinks covered. Listed out like that, it was like someone had decided to alphabetize all of human perversion. Some anagrams I knew, like MILF. I had no idea what others meant. BQDL and other strings of letters were cyphers I refused to investigate.