by Aaron Jay
I had heard of this. Territory the Party controlled could be--I guess the term is Fallowed--and the density of nano would drop to near zero. Goodbye mobs, mats and anything else of value. The nano density of another area would be increased. It was generally only done as a punishment, as the losses in transfer were prohibitive. It tended to figure into inter or intra-clan warfare. You couldn’t use it to make one area some sort of utopia. Well you could, but at loss of efficiency of 100 to 1 it wasn’t a viable strategy. It was a good tool to punish your enemies though. If you sacked an enemy clan’s territory, you could decimate it for a week or so and get a small benefit for your territory if you didn’t think you could hold onto it.
Nice how the Game automated salting your enemies’ earth if you conquered it. As far as I could recall the effect only lasted two weeks, but this was long enough to screw me. Especially since Brady could just do it to me again a month from now.
For the past weeks I had been thinking of this as my valley. I was the only one here. But the Game knew this valley and the mines and the entire territory around Quartzite belonged to Professor Brady, who had captured and thrown me in here for a million gold, two epic items and a favor. If I had either of the epics, I’d have beaten the Gathering Quest already.
I sat on a boulder to think about what to do and tried not to choke on the dust Brady had made of my ambitions.
One choice was to leave this valley and the Mines of Madness! and go somewhere else that had nano to gather. Of course, if I did that then the Eastmans camping at the mine entrance would capture and repeatedly kill me. Conversely, I could try my luck dealing with this out in the real world. Go see the people who booted Aabid the murderous arsonist out of their little club, not for moral reasons but because he wasn’t competent enough. Try to get them to back off somehow.
I thought through the risks and dangers of each scenario and decided that they could only kill me once in real life. I logged out.
*** ***
Gord and Smitty were the two henchmen I had dealt with the last time I had to interact with Brady and his people. By interact I mean get captured by them, punched a few times, and then thrown into a hole to rot. Still, for all of that, Gord and Smitty were good company for a pair of knee breakers who worked for a human scorpion.
Certainly, talking with them seemed less risky than going straight to Brady or someone representing the Eastmans. The fact that I was once again putting off the possibility of talking with Jude didn’t mean a thing. Seeing Gord and Smitty first was just good sense. That was my story and I was sticking with it.
The two had agreed to meet me at what had been a bar just outside of what had been a college. College had, as I understood the past, been the normal rite of passage to adulthood. You spent four years engaged in as much hedonism as you could get, playing video games and hearing about cultural-marxism. After that you left with a massive inescapable debt that forced you to slave away for the powers that be. Hedonism, video games, debt slavery. Apparently, things hadn’t changed a bit.
The bar had seen better days. It looked like it had been something of a lame dive even in its heyday. Random knick-knacks, curios, and such adorned the walls. Signs proclaiming the wisdom of our ancestors such as, “No working during drinking hours!” and, “Men: No Shirt, No shoes = No service. Women: No shirt = Free Drinks!” remained behind to prove that yes, handed the powers of the singularity we would likely do something stupid. Somehow, I still liked the place.
“Kid! How ya been?” asked Gord.
Smitty barely raised his beer glass in a faint greeting and gave me a sour look. They were considerate enough to already have a third glass at their table by the pitcher they were sharing. It was funny to see them outside the game. Gord was big enough that he still looked like he really should be in armor. Smitty’s lack of wizard robes was an improvement. They hadn’t really suited his face. His nose was too small for a proper wizard.
We had the place to ourselves. Which wasn’t a surprise. People didn’t really go out to bars anymore for all the same reasons people didn’t do most anything in real life anymore. I figured they must have brought the beer with them but then I saw an early model nano-printer in one corner. Restaurants and bars had just started implementing things like that just before the end.
“Hi, Smitty. Gord,” I replied, crossing the empty room to their table. I took a seat. Gord poured me a glass of beer. I took a hesitant sip. So that was what beer tasted like. I had looked forward to trying this at an inn with Jude once we got in the game. Not what I had thought it would taste like.
Smitty looked pretty grumpy.
“What is with Smitty?” I asked.
Gord laughed. Smitty just scowled a bit deeper.
“You have a habit of making his life a pain in the ass,” Gord said.
“What? Why? How?” I asked, confused.
Gord looked over to see if Smitty was going to answer. Instead of replying he just took another pull of his beer.
“Pretty impressive bit of playing, taking out all them Eastmans in The Mines of Madness! I didn’t think it could be done,” Gord said.
“Thanks, I was motivated,” I said.
Gord and I looked again at Smitty but he still refused to chime in. Gord sighed and decided he would fill me in on Smitty’s behalf.
“Well, the Eastmans were understandably pissed.”
I shrugged but I thought I knew where this might be going.
“It rolls downhill, don’t it?” Gord continued. “Tasha Eastman was pissed. She didn’t want to believe you could win without help. Smitty got a full audit by the boss cause of how he let--”
“We! We both let him buy some basic equipment and get some skills started. Both of us. You were there,” Smitty snapped at his partner.
“Sure, sure. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Only, you were the one who took all the gold from him,” Gord replied, then turned to me. ”Anyway, Smitty came away clean. The stuff he, ok we, sold you couldn’t and didn’t let you win. But the boss believes the cost of an audit should recovered. Smitty had some side deals going. Nothing the boss ever cared about or had a problem with before but, well, now he could placate Tasha and make a small profit himself. It rolls downhill.”
Smitty took another pull of his beer.
“Sorry Smitty. Umm, you aren’t looking to collect from me for all that, are you?”
“Keep your goddamned nano to yourself. You think I want anyone knowing you gave me anything? How is that going to work out for me? I’m not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice,” he growled.
We all had a few sips of beer.
“So, what do you want?” asked Gord.
“I thought we got on pretty well considering how we met. I wanted to ask you guys about something, but I’m not sure you feel like helping me out anymore.”
“You are an ok kid, Miles. But we were clear before about the professor. If you think we are going to do anything outside of orders you are crazy.”
“No, nothing like that. I just want to know why Professor Brady pillaged the area around The Mines of Madness! See if there is anything I can do about it.”
“I feel like you don’t really get what the Professor is like or what it means to work for a man like that, Miles. Brady lived through the fall. He lived through it and ended up on top and independent. There are literally fewer than a handful of people you can say that about out of billions of people, most of whom were broken down to feed nano. Brady is smart. Maybe smarter than your father. He didn’t end up a mutated shut-in, did he?”
“No, he just turned into a human scorpion.” I said, defending my father.
“Exactly. You are talking like you think we are going to decide what to tell you or whether to meet with you. Brady had orders on what to do if you reached out to us and what we could tell you and how we were supposed to handle drugging you.”
I had been listening carefully as he spoke. I followed it all until his last statement. He had said it in the sa
me matter of fact way he said the rest. They had drugged me?
I looked down at my beer. They looked at me looking at my beer. My last thought as I fell down into darkness was to wonder whether, after this first beer, I could say I really knew what the stuff was supposed to taste like.
*** ***
“Hello Miles,” said a voice.
I opened my eyes. Across from me was Professor Brady. He looked at me in exactly the same way he had the last time we met. With careful attention devoid of any attempt to have a human or emotional connection. His tweed jacket might have been a different shade of brown than the one in the Game, but who can tell the difference between one tweed jacket and another? The whole point of a tweed jacket is that it is no different from any other tweed jacket. It is a uniform that tells people the wearer is safe, responsible and non-threatening. The jacket failed to overcome his dead eyes. He was still unsafe and definitely threatening.
Smitty and Gord were absent. I wasn’t tied up, which seemed like a good sign. The fact that I woke up at all was a good sign. Brady was across a desk from me. Behind him were bookshelves crammed with books. Given that paper is prime biomass and we live in a world where storing and accessing information has come a long way since Gutenberg’s day, the books were a statement of wealth and paradigm as much as anything.
He gave me a carefully measured moment to take in my situation before he continued. Did he know exactly how long a drugged person needed to reorient themselves to waking up in his office?
“I have to apologize for how I brought you here. I only allow a small number of people to know where I am in real life. Enemies are inevitable in life these days. Convincing people to allow themselves to be drugged to come see me is often impossible. I have found that it is better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
So he did know exactly how long a drugged person needed to reorient themselves to waking up in his office. Nothing beats experience, in or out of game.
“Why did you want to see me so badly?” I asked.
“You came to me,” reminded Professor Brady.
“No. I came to Smitty and Gord.”
“You are young and ignorant. If you come to my agents, you must know that you are reaching out to me. To think that their purposes are not my purposes, that their decisions are about anything other than my goals and aims is a sign of disrespect. Your naivete will soon kill you, Miles. Your father won’t like that, and in his grief and anger he might lash out, which I would like to avoid.”
Like a good professor, he gave me time to think about what he had just said. Unfortunately, the only thing I was able to draw from what he had said is that I was in over my head and in danger. I already knew that.
“You could have seen me in a virtual setting.”
“Sometimes real life is safer than in a pod,” he promptly responded.
“Even if real life is dangerous enough that you feel the need to drug people for a chat.”
“Obviously, or I would have arranged things differently.”
Maybe he was correct. The Party owned Amulius. Perhaps he was safer talking of their business somewhere outside of the virtual.
I couldn’t think of anything better to do than ask him directly the question that had made me reach out to Smitty and Gord in the first place.
“You decided to pillage the area around the Mines of Madness! Why?”
“It was in my best interest.”
This was a non-answer. If you think everyone only ever acts out of their self-interest, then that is why anyone does anything. That wasn’t the kind of philosophy I had been taught by my father, but it certainly seemed to be the kind of idea that drove Professor Brady.
“Care to elaborate? How was it in your best interest?”
He looked at me in thought for a while.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. My why is my own business. Someone who I won’t name made it clear that I must bear this how.”
“Is there anything I can do to make you stop?”
“No. That is why I wanted to see you in real life. To make sure you understand that you are not in control of your own life or game anymore. Even I am only sometimes able to say that I control mine. I’d resent your actions causing my lack of control to be rubbed in my face if I still allowed myself the luxury of such sentiments. As Gord likes to say, ‘It rolls down hill.’ You are at the bottom of a hill that has been built over a very long time. Don’t bother me or my people anymore. I don’t want you near me. I brought you here so you can understand this down to your bones. More importantly, I brought you here so that your father understands that I and mine have as little to do with what is going to happen to you as possible.”
“If you just wanted to tell my father something, you could have just sent him a message.”
“And what do you think I am doing?”
Oh. Just when I think he can’t scare me anymore, he says something like that.
He nodded to me to signal that our appointment was over. The door behind me opened and Gord and Smitty entered. I got up a bit unsteadily. The three of us left Brady’s office.
From a side table in the hall, Smitty handed me a drink--another beer--and waited to see if I would drink it. Before I could get the drink to my lips, Gord swiped the skin on the back of my neck with a hand coated in some cool, slick liquid or oil. Turning, I saw that his hand had a glove on it. A numb feeling spread from my neck across my face and then beyond. I looked at him in annoyance, feeling betrayed. I had been planning to drink the damned thing.
“Sorry, just easier this way. Maybe we’ll run into you if you survive all this, Miles,” he said. Smitty looked skeptical.
And blackness came again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I’m on a beer diet. So far I’ve lost two days.”
These words of wisdom in a folksy font were the first thing I saw when I woke up. Ha ha. I guess if you work for a scorpion who dresses in tweed you have to keep your sense of humor. Did Gord and Smitty place everyone they abandoned after drugging right under this sign? It could just be coincidence. Looking around, about ten percent of the signs had something to do with being blotto. I could have woken to, “What I do when I am black out drunk is none of my damn business!”
In case it isn’t clear, I was back in the bar.
My head felt about as fuzzy as my mouth. I stumbled my way behind the counter and got myself a glass of water. I downed the glass of water in one go. Then I did it again. Finally, on the third refill, I stopped to breathe and take actual swallows and sips.
My little tête à tête with Brady had been profoundly unhelpful. I was still left with the same bad options I’d had before. Try to escape the Eastmans waiting for me at the entrance to the instance. Or, go see Maya and her mom and see if I can get them to stop putting the screws to Brady. I was relatively confident that fear and respect for my father would keep the Eastmans from doing anything too overt outside of the game.
Despite my best efforts, I would have to go to the Eastmans and if I went to the Eastmans I’d have to deal with Jude.
Jude had moved out of our building. I didn’t have Maya’s contact info. If I could at all avoid it, I didn’t want to call Jude up to get in touch with his girlfriend’s mom. Getting in touch with Tasha Eastman was no easy thing. Imagine trying to get in touch with, say, a U.S. Senator or CEO of a Fortune 500 company back in the old world. Just showing up or calling was unlikely to work.
I stumbled back to the Pitts. Ruod gave me his smile. I could swear he could somehow sniff out that I had just come from a bar and had been black out drugged. My hungover appearance was evidence of dissipation, and this met with his approval. While he would prefer everyone use the Pitts to distract and indulge themselves, any step in that direction was good by him. And now I was back in the Pitts. His smile was even warmer and more sincere than ever.
Ignoring the other freaks I passed down in the Pitts, I made it back to my little slice of our den of iniquity.
<
br /> The perfume of a tree’s shadow
The flavor of a drill’s whine
The view of sharp pains as rocks jab bare feet
I ran through the dead valley. Dust and ruin choked my breath and made my eyes tear. No grey wall jumpers leaped to kill me. Nothing wriggled its way from hibernation beneath the ground to try to kill whatever had disturbed its rest. The valley was just dead. It was hard to navigate through this wasteland. Every direction looked the same and dust got in my eyes and choked my mouth.
After some wrong turns and false starts, I finally made my way up the cliffside and back to the entrance to the Mines of Madness! I knew this territory only too well. It was just as dead as the outside since I had killed everything that had lived there. Silence comes after death. I prefer exp and loot after death, but that was long gone.
I knew where I was in the mines and which way to go. Back through the tunnels and levels, past my battles resolved and finished. Past my completed struggles until I came to the front entrance of the dungeon.
Looking around past the shimmer of my instance, I saw no one.
“Hey! Eastman hit squad! Come on out!” I yelled.
Nothing stirred. I sighed. They had to be there. If I wasn’t in my own instance of the Mines of Madness!, unreachable, I’d have been trussed up for Tasha’s dinner. On my side of the barrier I was untouchable.
“I’m not stepping out! I want to talk to Maya or maybe Tasha!” Still no one responded and it looked like there was no one waiting.
“Seriously. Come on out and can we talk like reasonable people? I am not stepping past the instance barrier, so this is just stupid. Maybe if Tasha and I can resolve things, you won’t be stuck twiddling your thumbs out here for months on end.”
