Gathering Strength

by Aaron Jay

  Some were listed by author. Adaptations from pre-collapse books seemed pretty popular. The names weren’t familiar to me: E. Redd., D. Schinhofen and others. There were reviews and comments to help people decide. There seemed to be something of a vicious flame war over whether Randi Darren or William D. Arand was the superior artist. Focusing on the text helped me ignore everything else.

  This all sounds too clinical. The temptation to explore the Pitts before jumping into the game pulled at me. I felt hot and sweaty. My eyes would dart here and there and each time I had to drag them back it took more effort. If my bet with Maya had been for anything less than my entire future, I don’t think I could have resisted.

  I was a young man who had spent months fighting life or death battles. To say I had some urges that I had been bottling up was an understatement. This idea of Pulling’s was idiotic.

  Thinking of her refocused me on finding the Game. The faster I logged in, the better.

  Finally I found the portal to the Game. After I won my bet, I could see what else life had to offer. Or, if not life, whatever this place was. I jumped into the game.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tasted a fence’s shadow

  Heard the sun reflecting off a car window

  Saw the smell of meat searing on a hot grill

  Everything looked about the same as when I last played. I was backed up against the same boulder as when I left. It looked like I’d lost the opportunity to claim the corpse of the giant iguana who I had killed just before logging out. His corpse had faded along with whatever skin, meat and claws I could have used. Thankfully, his near identical twin was right there for me to harvest. I raised my spell ring and tried unleashing a magic missile. Nothing happened. Goddamned Aabid and his new arson hobby. Apparently, I hadn’t quite been able to load the spell before I was kicked from the game.

  Drawing my sword, I tried to recall what I had learned of its combat habits from my last encounter.

  Large Iguana

  (iguana rhinolopha)

  This denizen of the desert attacks with bite, claws, and a special ranged attack with its tongue. Certain subspecies have increased hide abilities due to racial bonus from Chameleon.

  22/22 HP

  Time to go to work. It was a relief just to fight a monster and ignore the problems piling up IRL.

  If I kept my distance, it was happy to use that crazy tongue. The tongue attack wasn’t about inflicting damage so much as it was a control skill. I recalled that it kept trying to either disarm or trip me with the thing. I could use that.

  I feinted with my sword till it fell for the bait. Out whipped the tongue. The tip was a bit thicker than the rest and was covered in papillae that were sticky enough to help grab things. I had been expecting it, so managed to whip the blade out of its path and bring my buckler in from the side. I felt its tongue squish between my shield’s edge and the boulder. The iguana didn’t like that one bit. If you have ever bitten your tongue you’ll empathize with the lizard.

  Giving off a wheezing shriek, it did its best to retract its tongue. Putting my shoulder into it, I managed to keep it pinned in place. Like Mohamed having the mountain come to him the Iguana decided to come to its tongue if it wouldn’t work the other way around. Closing in on me and retracting its tongue, it eventually had enough leverage to slip its tongue away from me.

  My maneuver shaved a few hp from the thing. It hissed at me with a slightly more pronounced lisp than before. This thing’s eyes bulged from its skull, orbiting in different directions. It made it hard to judge what it was looking at and anticipate it. I decided to take the initiative and came in on it. It thought I was coming straight in, but I spun to the side as I closed. My sword came down in a short, sharp overhand cut. It tried to turn with me but couldn’t move far or fast enough to keep me from scoring a slash down its flank.

  Completing its turn, it raked me with a claw. A few shallow slices burned down my arm, but I had still gotten the better of the exchange. This was the trick. Being low-slung and long, it couldn’t turn worth a damn. Once we were close, I could always stay inside its turn radius. I would come in from the side faster than it managed to get oriented to me. So, a few spins round and round and its side was a bloody mess and it turned even more slowly. Soon enough, I put it out of its misery.

  A little bloody mayhem is a good stress reliever.

  I knew my way around the spiders and the iguanas now. Bit by bit, I was learning the tricks of this little slice of heaven. After loading up my spell ring I kept at it. Plants, bits of this creature or that, an interesting stone here or there were donated. I worked my way up the side of the canyon.

  My pace was continuing to inch up but not fast enough to save me from the Eastmans. I’d just lose less spectacularly. Whoopee. My relevant skills were sliding up. In particular, herbalism and skinning were coming along nicely. But even so, it wasn’t happening at a rate that would make enough of a difference.

  My father told me about this ancient Greek philosopher named Zeno of Elea. See, we didn’t just inherit the word for porn from the ancient Greeks. This Zeno fellow came up with a bunch of paradoxes. One was the dichotomy paradox. Basically, you can cut any distance in half. Like, you are going to cross a room and at some point, you will be halfway across. And then you can cut the remaining distance in half once more and you will have to cross that new mark to get across the room. Do it again. Cut the remaining distance in half and cross that far. The thing is, you can cut each remaining distance in half infinitely. So, you will never actually ever get across the room because there are an infinite number of half-way points in the way. Yet, we cross rooms all the time.

  The gathering quest goal was just like this. I was slicing the distance to the finish line finer and finer but I didn’t seem to be making much perceptible progress. Zeno argued that all motion was an illusion and I have to say, it felt like he was right. Working my way along, adding endless imperceptible shavings of material toward my quest, I was caught in Zeno’s little trap. Or maybe it was just Amulius, the Party’s tame AI, making it seem that way.

  The Pitts was so expensive and any nano I earned in the game had to go towards the Gathering quest. I was safe down here, but how long could I afford it? If I got another apartment and a new game pod under my name, the Party would know. Pulling was right that this was the only place I could play the Game anonymously.

  Days and then a week passed quickly. I would check in with Pulling now and again. The passage in and out of the lobby was a temptation each time, but I was slowly learning to ignore it.

  Whatever secrets the Pitts were hiding, I hadn’t tried my best to dig them up. At first, Pulling and I were both concerned that I might be in some danger but after a week of nothing to report, the porn empire was just another pod that I dreamed the Game from. Pulling kept making efforts to get me to try some of the other programs and poke around for her investigation. I told her that at the minimum she would have to pay for any time spent in the Pitts not gaming. That stopped her wheedling.

  There was something wrong with repeatedly having to decline the requests of an attractive woman who was urging me to browse through porn. But as amusing as the situation might have become, I couldn’t afford the time or nano to look for a needle in a pornstack. All I really wanted to focus on was winning my goddamned bet and showing Maya and Jude that they were wrong.

  Grinding always feels endless. They wouldn’t call it grinding if it wasn’t a grind. I had almost finished working my way along one side of the valley. I still had the canyon floor and the other side to explore.

  It was evening of my seventh day playing at the Pitts. I was bent over, about to harvest some mesquite bean seedlings, when I heard a snort and some kind of pig or boar came rooting along from the other side of a patch of cacti.

  Dire Peccary

  (Pecari tajacu)

  The pig-like Collared Peccary or Javelina sleeps in the shade under trees and bushes during the day and emerges in the early evening to
forage for succulent foliage, including Opuntia pads and fruit. They feed on cacti, mesquite beans, Agave lechuguilla, sotol and monstrous insects.

  HP 25/25

  Gore attack

  Charge

  Poor sight

  Heightened Smell

  My ability to identify and find out more information about the things I was running across was increasing. According to its description, I was in exactly the right time and place to run into one of these things.

  The Dire form of an animal was a tougher, meaner, larger and vaguely demonic version of the original. Luckily, Peccary aren’t too tough, mean, large or demonic to begin with. I was pretty sure a Dire Boar could trample me into paste.

  The Peccary saw something taking the food in its area and charged. I don’t mean that it ran at me, although it did. I mean it Charged me. Monsters often have extraordinary abilities that defy the laws of physics. In this case, the damned thing didn’t need to bother building up momentum, overcoming inertia, or deal with the usual variables of force = mass * acceleration. Its velocity just suddenly was.

  I gave it the magic missiles from my spell ring right off the bat. The bolts hit, one, two, three, and didn’t slow the pig one bit. The thing about Charge is that only death stops it. Magic Missile, despite wiping most of its HP out, couldn’t even deflect the piggy. It hit me center mass. I went flying back, limp - all the air and whatever it is that makes your bones and muscles work together knocked out of me. I dropped like a sack of wet sand.

  It got its tusk into me and flipped me over. The pain managed to get my lungs working again. I took in a wheezing gasp and started trying to fight. We were in a scrum where it held all the advantages. I was on my back and had no leverage. My health bar vanished at a frightening rate and I was pretty sure a respawn was coming. The only thing that saved me was how close to death those magic missiles had already brought it. My hits were feeble but enough in the end given the head start I had on it.

  It collapsed. I would swear its final expression was one that said, “But, I charged him. He should be dying here not me.”

  My HP were almost gone. There may not have been an official status effect of “broken ribs” that caused an inability to breathe without crushing pain, but I had it anyway. I lay there waiting to regen. Slowly, breath by breath the pain of breathing faded away.

  Pain is in part a learned response. Being maimed repeatedly and then regenerating was slowly teaching my brain to recalibrate the pain I was experiencing. I don’t recommend this as a method for increasing your pain tolerance.

  After my ribs started minding their own business and stopped stabbing me in the lungs, I was able to pay attention to a notification, which was usually good news. I had heard a DING! I had leveled.

  Miles Boone

  Level 7

  Exp: 21,064 (28,000 to next level)

  Hit Points: 63 (8 +1 Con bonus per level)

  Str 13 (+1)

  Dex 12 (+1)

  Con 13 (+1)

  Int 13 (+1)

  Wis 13 (+1)

  Cha 12 (+1)

  Luc 0* (-%$)

  Titles: Wheeler Dealer, 1st Student of the Old Ways

  Skills:

  Beginner Alchemy 257/500 to Journeyman Level

  Novice Blacksmithing 0/250 to Beginner Level

  Novice Crafting 0/250 to Beginner Level

  Beginner Herbalism 392/500 to Beginner Level

  Novice Leatherworking 0/250 to Beginner Level

  Novice Mining 83/250 to Beginner Level

  Beginner Spelunking 327/500 to Journeyman Level

  Journeyman Trader 111/1000 to Master Level

  Beginner Trap Detection 310/500 to Journeyman Level

  Novice Trap Disarm 16/250 to Beginner Level

  Feats:

  Perception

  *n/a

  Level seven. A bit of a placeholder level. The extra HP were certainly welcome but seven didn’t offer any stat points or other useful goodies.

  The biggest advantage level seven should have offered me was increased spell capacity. Another spell slot for each spell level should have boosted my combat effectiveness by almost twenty percent. But I still hadn’t managed to cast a spell in combat. Even weak mobs were able to break my concentration enough to disrupt my casting. My ruined luck stat was going to hamstring me more and more as so many of the benefits I accrued wouldn’t help me.

  With a sigh I turned back to the quest at hand.

  The Dire Peccary should help, I hoped. While it was no Tarrasquito, it had to be worth more than the spiders, iguanas and other mobs I had mostly been dealing with. I skinned and butchered him. It was a good haul. Lots of meat (x5), the skin (x3) and the tusks (x2) were more than I was usually able to grab off my kills and of a slightly higher quality than usual.

  I donated them, hanging onto two pieces of meat in hopes of Rufus and me eating some pulled pork in our near future.

  That is when I noticed it. How could I not? I had been obsessively looking at the almost imperceptible sliver of the gathering quest’s completion bar for a week. Now, my sliver was thinner. It was subtle since the sliver was tiny to begin with, but it was definitely a smaller sliver than before. I had somehow lost Gathering points.

  No. I hadn’t lost points. I needed more points in total.

  I knew why as soon as I noticed that my total points hadn’t gone down, but that my needed points had gone up. I had leveled. The amount of gathering I needed was now ten percent higher. Ten percent. I actually needed more gathering points after a week’s grinding than when I started the quest.

  The pig looked at me. It had its vengeance from beyond its grave. I kicked it in its piggy face.

  I swear I could almost hear Maya’s laughter. When I closed my eyes all I could see was Jude shaking his head with his smug, patronizing sorrow. How was I moving backwards like this? I leveled faster than I could collect mats.

  Threading the needle of the gathering quest was not easy. I knew that a lot of people got tantalizingly close and then leveled--keeping them from escaping the Crib. But usually it was a close run thing. You almost finished the quest before the goal receded in front of you. What was going on with me?

  When asking myself why my game was different for me than for others, the answer was obvious. My luck stat. I pulled more exp per kill than most people. It was the silver lining of what Maya had done to me. More like a silver spanner in the works for this quest. I was going to level too fast. Before I’d get close to completing the quest, I’d level and the bar would expand.

  Zeno of Elea had a paradox for this one too. Achilles and the Tortoise. Imagine that you are the mightiest warrior of legend, Achilles. You are racing a tortoise. Of course, you give the tortoise a head start. You are goddamned Achilles aren’t you? The starting gun goes off and both you and the tortoise take off. By the time you reach where the tortoise started the race, the tortoise will have moved on a bit. And when you reach this next point the tortoise will have moved on a bit once more. Every time you get to the old point where the tortoise used to be, he will have moved ahead at least a little bit. Mighty Achilles can’t catch up to a tortoise. Amazing how every tortoise from mythology always won his damned races.

  I was Achilles and the gathering quest was the tortoise. I’d never catch up. The goal would always move out of my reach. Achilles came to a bad end too. Grinding was a waste of time. Everything I could think of to do was a waste of time. I had no ideas of how to overcome this.

  I sat on a nearby boulder and tried to think of a solution. But try as I might, nothing came to me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been wracking my brains for ways to beat the Gathering quest all this past week. But at least I had been making enough progress that I had hope.

  Deadly attacks, my home burning, my dad banning the Game from his house, the GMs being after me, Maya, my best friend betraying me. I had hung on through all of that. I was no quitter. You know how you mess someone up? Not by punishing them when they screw up. Punish them when the
y do something good. That is a real mindfuck. With my luck stat and Hardcore Mode, the harder I played, the farther from my goal I would end up.

  A quiet voice I had ignored ever since Maya had broken my roll-up couldn’t be silenced anymore. I couldn’t avoid it any longer. No one could beat five Beginner Quests with a broken character. Maya was going to win. I was going to lose. I was lost. I logged out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The wrenching confusions of kinesthesis didn’t penetrate my depression. I awoke in the pod the Pitts assigned me. One of who knows how many. An endless list of carnal pleasures were offered to me. If I ended as a slave for Maya, I could still indulge to my heart’s (or if not my heart, some other organ’s) content. Most people slave away in the Crib. One way or another, most people grind away for someone else’s benefit. Most people make do with the kinds of distractions on offer at the Pitts. That greeter, Ruod, was right. They offered stability. I saw a lifetime of slavery ahead of me and these fantasies were starting to look like a tempting escape.

  Why did I think I was so special? My dad? His specialness left him disfigured and isolated. He raised me to think my life had to have meaning. Purpose. But right in front of me was happiness, of a sort. It was better than nothing, wasn’t it?