Gathering Strength

by Aaron Jay

  He took it all in, asking as few questions as necessary to get my story from me. My father always told me that the greatest trick in life was being able to pay attention. That what everyone thought was his genius was mostly just his ability to pay attention. He paid attention to me and my story.

  When I was done, he sat back and closed his eyes. His finger started making circles on the arm of his chair, his signal in the virtual that he was putting that massive brain of his to work.

  His eyes opened.

  “Well, what is the answer?” I asked. I wanted it to come out snarky and sarcastic, but I couldn’t manage it. Instead, it sounded desperate to me.

  “The answer is the same as it always is. Play the Game, Miles. Play the Game as well as you can.”

  “You aren’t going to tell me to get rid of that thing?” I pointed to the glass jar and its inhabitant. He looked over at it for a moment and then turned back to me.

  “Of course you should get rid of it. Lilith…” he shook his head in anger and sadness, “But you need to choose to get rid of it. I can do nothing otherwise.”

  “It is vital to winning my bet.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t need it. But you need to believe you don’t. I can’t remove it without your cooperation. No, I won’t wag my finger at you and tell you things you already know.”

  He could remove it later. I needed it now.

  “So that is it?” I asked.

  “I’m here for you. I love you. If you are willing to get rid of this… addiction, I will do it.”

  I didn’t want to. I couldn’t tell how much of me wanted to keep it because I needed it for the Game and my bet, and how much because of all the pleasures it brought.

  “Ok. So, ‘Go play the Game.’ Hearing all that I’ve been up to, your big advice is ‘play the Game.’”

  He smiled a crooked smile.

  “Yes, Miles. It’s all I can say right now.”

  I guess that was that. He never tells me what to do. What is the point in having a genius for a father if he can’t tell you what to do?

  I got up to leave. Just as I was about to exit he cleared his throat.

  “That stone you got in the prairie dog colony is interesting. I’d think on it.”

  I turned around, but he had already logged out. A blink of my eyes and I was back in the parlor. That is just like my father. Seeing Jude once again, Aabid trying to kill me on Tasha’s order, an implant messing with my mind--all these things and he finds a bit of loot interesting.

  Rising with a grunt, ArchE escorted me to the door.

  “I wish people still used hats and coats,” he said at the door.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “So, I could hand you your hat and help you put on your coat. It’d be nice if people could still help each other put a hat and coat on to deal with how cold the world can be. Good luck Miles.”

  He gave me a small smile and the door was shut behind me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  My mind felt clear for the first time in I wasn’t sure how long. It was a nice walk back to my entrance to the Pitts. I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t had to keep an eye peeled for Aabid the homicidal maniac or anyone else who wanted to ingratiate themselves to the Eastmans.

  I made it back without incident and stepped into the lobby.

  As I passed him on the way to the elevator, Ruod looked at my face as if he knew what I was thinking and planning and why. I wished I could ask him what I was up to because for the life of me, I didn’t know.

  As I made my way under the city back to my pod, I couldn’t stop wondering if I was actually going to enter the Game. Have you ever wondered if you were about to do something stupid? Diving back into the Pitts’ entertainments would be stupid and self-destructive. People are stupid and self-destructive. I am people. Therefore, logic proves that I’m likely to give in to temptation.

  “Play the Game,” I repeated to myself as I engaged my pod. I hurried as much as I could past the ads from the Pitts. Temptations tempted, sirens sang. I think she was there but I didn’t let myself be sure. Her voice called to me. I knew that if I looked over, I’d end up going with her. I refused to look and just swiped through the different menus to get myself into the Game.

  There was an almost palpable pull from the ads and pop-ups. If I focused on Her for even a second, I knew I’d be lost. It was like a screwy version of Orpheus and Eurydice, where Eurydice was a stripper skank and if I looked back, I’d be the one stuck in the Pitts. Or maybe I was Lott’s wife. Why are so many of our oldest stories about people giving in to temptation?

  It was with a sense of disbelief that my senses fell into chaos and back into order. The kinesthesia of entering the game was a welcome confusion. I hadn’t chosen to go back to Lilith’s creations. Unbelievable. I had really thought I’d break at the last moment.

  The fallow remained. Dust and death and a thin ribbon of life.

  Dirt and grit shifted as I collapsed to my knees. I may be stuck in bleak and barren prison, but I knew that I had won a small victory just by logging in. It was a confusing surprise to find that I was stronger than I thought I was. Maybe my father’s faith in me wasn’t misplaced.

  What could I do here? There were a handful of herbs I could make out. I was in the same impossible bind as before. Not enough resources were available here. Anywhere else in the Game, the Eastmans would have me.

  There was one lead I should follow up. What did my father mean about the stone being interesting?

  I took it out. Its description was still a confused jumble.

  $t@ne of ^$&@^!

  ??????

  ????????? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ??? ??/???? ???? ????? ??? ????? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ?????????

  ???? ????? ?? ???? ?????? ?? ? ??? ?? ????? ?? ???

  (@*$&)*(&%@) ??????

  *?? ????? ?????

  The description was a series of blanks and question marks that seemed to evolve and twist. I couldn’t decode it.

  I gave up on examining the prompt and tried to figure it out more directly. My hands felt it all over. I carefully traced my fingertips over the entire surface. I was looking for a crack, a scratch, a bump--some small detail to help me understand it. Something to activate it. I even smelled and tasted it. As far as I could tell, it was just a stone.

  Removed from my inventory, it was too big to carry for longer than a minute or so. I turned it over with a thump, giving each of its sides some time to face up.

  Nothing I did to it caused any changes.

  I spoke every command word I could think of to it.

  “Engage!” “Activate!” “Begin!” “Grow!” “Live!” “Die!” “Attack!” I racked my brain for every verb I could think of. Not a thing changed or happened that I could tell.

  Giving up for the moment, I put it back into my inventory.

  I thought about leaving the instance. Tasha should have stopped surveillance on the entrance. But what if she hadn’t? The funny thing was that if the fallow ended it would be a sign that I was probably fine to escape my dead little world. At least until the Party found me again.

  Alright. My father said, “Play the Game.” So let’s play.

  I began working the strip along the border of the Crib. I began collecting herbs: prairie bluestem grass, luminous pineleaf beardtongue, creeping ember root. From one side of the valley to the other I dug and plucked and harvested.

  You had to time it just right to finish the job before the barrier of the Crib would wash in and push you over. I lost a good number of plants whenever the veil knocked me off my feet.

  I climbed up the valley cliffs on either side of the valley. There were pockets of stippleback lichen, golddust lichen and other herbs that liked to grow clinging to the stone escarpments. I was trying to scrape some from the rocks before the barrier shoved me off when a grey wall jumper scrabbled in from the wilds.

  It hissed and I nearly pissed myself. It was so quiet and dead here--and the
n I had a giant hairy spider coming for my face.

  If I had needed to aim, I would have missed, stuck on the cliffside as I was. Thank god for Magic Missile’s auto-hit function. My spell ring shot out three orbs, taking it down.

  There was no point in saving my one spell. The fallow made the valley safe. Heck, if worse came to worst I could always flee into the fallow and it would eat any mobs who chased me.

  I collected the body parts and loot as fast as I could to keep it from decay.

  After that I did my best to keep my eyes peeled for any mobs wandering across. I needed all sorts of organs and body parts to practice my alchemy.

  Between keeping one eye on harvesting and the other on the veil, I had a difficult time keeping watch for much needed wandering monsters. Early in the afternoon I lost my shot at a pack of silverknife roadrunners. They came across and shot out to their deaths in the fallow before I could do anything.

  It was a happy coincidence when a giant horned toad landed just past the barrier not too far from where I was digging out the root bulb of some buffalo grass. With another Magic Missile, it was a goner. I ran down the side of the valley and started dissecting it, knowing that until it was in my inventory the quality of its organs would steadily drop off.

  Between this and a few other finds, by the end of the afternoon I had the makings of a few potions.

  Winding along the floor of the valley was the creek that ran along the valley floor and past the barrier into the wilds. My camp was set up next to it. The water seemed unaffected after coming through the fallow, but I still filled my waterskin as close to the barrier as I could manage. Under the water, I was able to shove my hand almost a foot farther toward the wilds before the barrier pushed it back.

  That evening I began brewing potions. Calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, dissolution. I made a handful of potions and donated them to the gathering quest. The points I received were nowhere near my old daily quota, but it wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be.

  Working on alchemy left a residue of plant clippings, offal and worse. Processing the ingredients removed all the parts that could be donated for my quest. What was left behind was worthless. I threw everything I could into the stream and washed up.

  Exiting the Game back into the Pitts seemed like tempting fate. Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t be tempting fate but myself--and I didn’t trust myself. I’d sleep here. So that is how the next few days went. I slowly worked my way back and forth along the barrier and brewed potions, sleeping in the Game.

  It’s funny, even though I knew that my pace doomed me, just the fact that I was making progress at all helped me. The voice telling me to give up was easier to ignore. My alchemy skill was slowly increasing and so was my herbalism. Progress, even limited progress, helps beat back despair.

  One day while I was climbing the cliff after a patch of sunshield lichen, I found a small quartz seam. I actually smiled and laughed after mining it and donated half the resulting stones.

  If I could use them as reagents in my potions, I might be able to get my gathering rate high enough to beat Maya. Perhaps I’d be able to when I leveled my Alchemy up a bit higher.

  That night, Remus returned.

  He came out of the haze and dust and plopped himself by my campfire. Somehow, I had forgotten him. How was that possible? I knew. It was Lilith’s little reptilian friend coiling around my nervous system. I had forgotten my friend.

  Lilith hadn’t wiped my memories. On my own, I had gotten into the habit of only remembering things that helped me achieve my goals. Remus hadn’t been part of my goals. Or my other desires. My mind had chosen to focus on what it thought was important. Everything else, including Remus, just faded. The drawbacks of the implant were horrifying.

  Guilt, fear and regret washed over me. Remus just looked at me as if nothing had happened. I recalled how I had heard him howl just before I had gone to see my father. He had saved me.

  “Remus boy! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He gave my face a little lick.

  From then on, he stayed nearby. He made himself useful by barking whenever any creature made it past the barrier. This let me focus on harvesting while still getting a quicker jump on any mob opportunities. Unless our luck was terrible and the mob came out impossibly far away, we never lost an encounter to the fallow.

  I knew I was still going to lose my bet at this rate but somehow it wasn’t driving me to despair and the Pitts anymore. Working with Remus and making some progress was enough for the moment.

  That evening I was cleaning up after making my potions when Remus looked at me and nipped me. I lost two hit points and cursed.

  “What the hell was that for?” I said

  He just looked at me. I repeated the question to myself. What was that for? He wasn’t angry. Remus was giving me his wolfish look that said I was an idiot.

  What had I just been doing when he bit me? I had been clearing things up after making potions. I had been throwing away the leftover stems, leaves and seeds I couldn’t use for my potions. Why would that make him bite me?

  Leftover stems, leaves and… seeds. I was an idiot.

  You might recall my explanation about how useless it was to plant seeds on land you hadn’t claimed. If you did, you would have to sit there and watch it constantly or creatures would come and eat it or take possession of it. But for me that was a feature, not a bug. I was stuck here anyway. I wished more mobs would come. If a Tarrasquito or something I couldn’t handle came through, I could just run into the fallow.

  Excited, I grabbed the few seeds I could still find and planted them along the ground by the undulating barrier.

  “Thank you, Remus!”

  He just chewed at the fur on his leg and ignored me now that I had seen the obvious.

  The next day, I collected herbs and didn’t use any of the seeds for potions and planted them instead. It took me almost a week to collect enough seeds to plant all the free land within the area the barrier protected from the fallow. By that time, the first few seeds had sprouted.

  The herbs at the edge of the undulating footprint of the barrier were sickly but most of my crops did fine. Some that I left alone to keep growing managed to keep evolving.

  This had even better consequences. The rate at which mobs came across the border doubled. I guess they were looking for snacks. Slowly my gathering rate was inching back up to something survivable.

  I ran along the barrier and continued planting. As realistic as the Game was, it still followed video game logic in some things. Plants grew at the same rate monsters respawned. Life cycles were based on Game pacing.

  After another week, I had enough seeds planted to cover all the area that the fallow couldn’t drain. There was a band as thick with life as the terrain could manage. My brewing speed and skill had moved from novice to the high end of beginner.

  With my odd little farm in place, I had a bit of free time each day. It takes a lot less time to harvest crops you plant than to gather from the wild. The herbs are right where you planted them.

  I was also starting to get a sense of which herbs did best next to which. Which ones needed shade or more sun. Even so, my daily quota still wasn’t high enough to win my bet.

  Sitting by my creek, I picked apart the stem of some hawk’s claw bush. Only the bark was useful, so I was just picking it apart to keep my hands busy while I tried to think of some way to keep increasing the daily quota.

  I watched the twig pieces float along into the barrier. There was an eddy along one bank of the creek. One of the twigs went past the barrier but the eddy dragged it back into the Crib. The eddy spun it round and round, back and forth across the barrier a few times before it finally slipped free and went along its way out into the wilds.

  Things could come back from the wilds to this side. I could send things across the barrier and then they could come back.

  Goddamn. I was an idiot. The answer was right in front of me. Fishing!


  Smitty and Gord had let me buy a solid adventurer’s gear set way back when. Pulling had padded out my equipment for me when she busted me out of here. I didn’t have fishing line but I did have some cord. A hook was harder to figure out. There was a plant called Joseph’s coat that had barbed thorns with a sharp curve to them.

  It took me a bit, but eventually I was standing by the creek with a length of improvised fishing line baited with some offal from a caracal I had killed earlier.

  I spun my line around over my head a time or two and then released it. It arced over the water and passed through the barrier.

  Not being able to see a thing past the veil, I tried my best to get a sense by feel of what was happening at the other end of the line. I hadn’t felt it when it landed in the water on the other side. Who knew what the wilds would make of my little probe into the world beyond? Would they just dissolve my line?

  I pulled the line back slowly. It felt completely normal. The line resisted lightly due to the stream running against it. I hauled it in and checked. My bait was still there.

  A sense of triumph ran through me.

  My wrist snapped as I cast the line again. My second attempt wasn’t as good and it landed short. The water wanted to carry the hook downstream, but I still hauled it back and recast. This time my throw worked.

  Placing my fingertips onto the line, I tried to feel any tugs or tremors. Time passed. The line moved a bit but I was pretty sure it was due to the water working on the line. I hauled it back and found the hook was empty.

  Did something grab the bait and I missed it? Did the bait slip my improvised hook? Did the bait just dissolve after some time outside of the constraints of the Crib?