by Isaac Stone
I sat down on a bench near a wall near the temple where we’d made our last stand and tried to sort some things out. The moon seemed to laugh at me up in the sky. I checked the logbook and found it to have no change. If I was to find the courier cache, assuming it was still there, and not taken by the commandos, I would need to spend days searching through this city. Eventually, the maps would show another plot cache and I could use it to find what I sought. Or the plot cache might throw another wrench in my plans. They could prevent you from reaching a goal as easily as they could advance it. One of the plot caches I found on Wolf Mountain set off a string of firecrackers that let a band of bootleggers know where I was located.
At least it wasn’t raining at the moment. However, given the subtropical nature of this place, that could quickly change.
I stood next to the temple and watched the moon reach its zenith before it began its slow descent into the night. The thing about moonlit nights in the rain forest is that they’re intense when there is no cloud in the sky. The jungle makes its own noise all night and you have to endure it. The game designers had knocked themselves out with this one. It appeared to be an authentic jungle from where I sat on the bench near a temple. I didn’t want to go around and see if the bodies were still there or not. If the game was supposed to be consistent with the play scenario, they should be there. The only way they could be removed would be the introduction of some ghouls or other nocturnal creatures. However, I’d not seen any sign of those since I entered the jungle. Where would these strange creatures originate? I opened the logbook, still easy to read under the moonlight. There was nothing in it about weird dwellers of the temple who roamed the city at night.
What hit me the hardest was the knowledge that my own stupid decision had killed the men with me. Okay, this was just a game and they were mere computer simulations, but I’d made the decision to attack the Nazi Commandos when we were out-numbered and out-gunned. Of course, we were slaughtered, with the exception of me who managed to fall down some well and survive. I wondered if the well fall was a scenario built into the game to keep the player alive for an extended period of time. In all reality, I should’ve died when I fell down the well. But I was stunned and managed to crawl out of it to find everyone dead or gone. This struck me as a bad oversight in the game or something they’d built in as a back door to keep an inexperienced player alive. Surely, if you were killed too soon, you might not want to come back inside and play again. They needed a way to keep someone new to the VR game world alive who would continue to buy tickets for the ride.
None of this could excuse my own poor judgement. Had I pulled the men out, we would’ve survived. I became convinced of this while I spent the night in pursuit of the commandos I never found. We had plenty of places where the three of us could’ve fell back and defended ourselves. Many places to hide out while the commandos swarmed over the city.
There was no denying what I’d done and the stupid mistakes I’d made. Even though this was a VR world, it ate at me. The first time I’d had the opportunity to lead anything and it ended badly. This wasn’t the way it happened in the movies. Or even the books. But I knew the difference. Still, the sense of frustration over-powered me and I wanted to give up, even though the game was far from over right now.
My idle speculations were interrupted by the vibration of the gun handle in its holster. For some reason, this VR team had no issue contacting me to see what was wrong. The previous VR team, the one who worked for Sandstone Gems, preferred to watch the fun from their monitors and let me screw up. Then they would sit back and let Rhonda clean up the mess from her chair. This bunch, on the other hand, wanted to get involved in every aspect of my game travel.
I pulled out the service revolver and flipped back the handle cover. Once again, it was the face of Rhonda who looked back at me from the communicator screen.
“Go ahead, mission control,” I told her. “The Eagle has not landed and is experiencing some heavy issues.”
“We understand you lost your team,” Rhonda told me. “Do you really think it’s still possible to find that courier box in the city without any other help?”
“I was in worse situations on the mountain,” I informed her. “You may recall what happened at the end on top of the abandoned asylum. I managed to survive against a mob boss who wanted to kill me.”
“That was different,” Rhonda, pointed out. “You had Chamita to help you out. Who is supposed to back you up right now?”
“I do believe her clone, Chamistra, is running around someplace. Why don’t you send her back to me?”
“I can’t do that, Vince. She’s part of the game and I don’t control it.”
“Then could you put in some kind of request?” I asked her. “I really could use her help right now.”
“I’ll try,” she replied, “but there isn’t a whole lot that can be done. The team decided her leaving was crucial for the game. I have no power over that aspect.”
“For Christ’s sake!” I pleaded. “Is there anything you can do for me at all? I need some help down here.” I felt the wind on my back as a breeze blew through the city from the forest.
“We can pull you out,” she told me. “I can do that for you. Really, how do you expect to finish this game on your own without help?”
“Right. The help your bosses won’t send.”
“Look,” she pleaded. “I am telling you what they tell me. You want to leave; we can do it and get you out of the VR world. You’re physical body is in the chair and we can pull you out. In two hours subjective time, you’ll be out of the clinic and on your way back home.”
“Not good enough,” I snapped back. “I’ll lose the extra money I’d make from winning the game. You can’t pull me out unless there is a medical problem. I know this. Besides, if it was a question of emergency, I’d be out of the game already.”
She was silent.
“I know I'm being a whiny punk, I know. So let me finish this thing my way,” I told her and snapped the handle cover closed.
I swore and pushed the pistol back into its holster. Just like this new bunch, stick me into an impossible situation, have my entire team wiped out, and now they refused to give me any kind of aid. I was furious, but there was little I could do about the situation. I just wanted to kick the nearest temple, but I’d break my foot. Even in this crazy scenario, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do. Gods it was like being back at the call center.
I felt the humidity on my back again now that the breeze was gone. There were no insect clouds inside the abandoned city, but the heat from the day was still on me. The trees and vegetation on the ground held it in place and it wasn’t about to move anywhere.
I reflected on how I came to be in this crazy VR world and it still made no sense. Not 24 hours after my last real job, answering a phone for a financial company, bounced me, I was offered the play-test position with Sandstone Gems, who had their own VR game system in development. How did they know I was in need of a job? Although I’d put in for the position months ago, the offer didn’t arrive until I was tossed out the door from the financial concern. There had to be some kind of insider knowledge about me. How else would they have known I needed the job?
I thought about the loans that I’d racked up while obtaining my archaeology degree during my years in college. It didn’t seem to be a lot until the bills started to arrive from the banks that guaranteed the loans. When those arrived, I realized I was in for the equivalent of a house payment each time. I thought about a return to school; maybe get some kind of advanced degree in my field. That didn’t seem to be such a good idea since most of the people I knew who worked in the field with advanced degrees didn’t make too much money. The only way I could see to make real money was to hit the big time: find a lost civilization, hit the lecture circuit, and get a TV show. It was the Pareto curve gone berserk. Instead of the top 20 percent with all the money and glory, it was the top 0.5 percent.
RPG games were the only thing th
at gave me relief from the financial call center job I had to endure in the daytime. I could create my own little civilization on top of a table and battle it out with the other enthusiasts. There were all kinds of tournaments and contests all over the country.
Perhaps if I’d gone into a different field, this would not have happened, but that was all in the past. I cursed my life and my luck. I was stuck inside an ancient city that didn’t exist, trying to find a phantom treasure, and in hope of a miracle that would allow me to get home with a fat paycheck. At least my headache didn’t return this time.
And then there was the whole issue of how I was supposed to save a VR world from erasure.
As I sat there and tried to come up with another plan of attack, I pulled out the logbook and decided to see if there was anything new inside it. Somehow, I didn’t think this made the game fair. If the VR team could continue to add things to the logbook, how did that make the game winnable at all? It reminded me of a bad mystery where the crucial material to solving the crime took place at the end of the book. That was lousy to the reader. I almost walked out on a Hollywood movie years ago when it pulled the same stunt.
As I opened the logbook, there was a completely new cache container that shined out on the pages. As I didn’t have a clue what else to do at the moment, I noted the location of the container, three temples to the north, and walked in the direction of it.
Once more, I used the moon as my only source of light. The landscape beneath me appeared mysterious and serene in the light of the pale orb that hung over the abandoned city. According the map layout, this city had to have accommodated 10,000 people at its zenith. Why it was abandoned and why it was pristine made no sense to me. It had to be the idea of the game designers. They wanted a clean lost city because a realistic one was a mess. No one would explore the ancient halls if they had to dig mud out of them first. Better to give the paying public a fun experience over a realistic one.
I’m sure the bare perimeter and everything else added into the mystic of what lay before me. The erotic statuary was the cream in the soup, so to speak. The carvings alone made this an adult level adventure, please sign the dotted line and swear you are over 18 years of age. This had to be based off something real that the designers saw once upon a time and decided to incorporate it into the game. The fact that the one figure, which was consistently repeated in the designs, was the king who built the city told me a lot about the mentality of whoever came up with this part of the game. I couldn’t image this section as popular. At least not with most people.
The box was small and shoved between two carvings. I pulled it out with little effort. I doubt it was larger than two inches across. It was a simple matter for me to open it up and pull out the paper that was inside it. I held the paper up in the lunar light to read it better.
“The temple right in front of you,” It read, “please goes inside and have a look.” I returned the box to its original location and viewed the temple in front of me.
I was careful about the approach. Since I still didn’t know where the German commandos could be found, it seemed a good idea to assume this was some kind of trap. I paused before I entered the temple and looked at the door. Through the other side, I could see another open passage. This time the temple would have at least two entrances and I wouldn’t have to worry about becoming trapped on the inside.
Clean as it might be, I could still smell the dust in the air. The temple reminded me of a cave with the moisture on the walls from the evening humidity. It was vast, just like the other ones, a good 10,000 square feet on the inside and every wall filled with carvings. The interior of this temple was dominated by one statue that sat near the floor, yet rose up out of the center on a large pedestal. Was this what I was supposed to find?
The statue was surrounded by candles. There had to be at least forty of them, which flickered in the darkness and cast their shadows upward to the statue. In front of it was a silver plate with flowers and fruit on it. Someone made an offering here, but I had no idea who it was. They couldn’t be one of the commandos. That group would blow-up the statue before they would do it honors.
I stopped in front of it and looked at the image. This one was a little bit different from the other iconography in the temples. It only had two arms and two legs, most had at least four arms, which I assume was to indicate movement. It was of a woman and stood at least ten feet high. She didn’t wear much, but enough to cover her and show some modesty. She held a knife in one hand and a spear in the other.
It was Chamita, there could be no mistake. The same mischievous eyes, the same innocence in her face, it was the same woman I’d abandoned to return to the real world at the end of the Wolf Mountain game. The same woman I’d married during the game and couldn’t forget, even if she was wasn’t real. I felt she was still based on a real person.
How did this statue end up in the temple? It had significance because the game team wanted me to find it. They’d found out what Chamita resembled and recreated her in stone. As they had done by placing her twin in the convent of the yogini nuns in the form of Chamistra. It made me wonder how close the two companies really were and what kind of information was shared between them.
The game made me very angry. I was fed-up with this nonsense and ready to call Rhonda.
My gun began to vibrate again. I reached down and, once more, pulled it out of the holster. Well, well. We thought along similar lines I suppose. I was ready to phone them and demand some answers, they were ready to call me and lay down the law, I assumed.
I flipped the cover off the communicator screen and there stared Rhonda at me with her lips blazed. She was not in a good mood and I never saw her irate even when I woke her up on an emergency call from the mountain.
“I’ve been told to pass some new along to you,” she said in a very pronounced and solid manner. “They deliberated on letting you know, but the VR team decided it might have some bearing on whether or not you’d want to continue with the game.” She stared right at me.
“Let’s hear it,” I told her. I was so tired of these games with the game.
“Sandstone Gems knows you are working for us,” she announced. I could tell she was relieved to get the words out to me.
I was stunned. How could this happen? I covered my trail every step. No way did I want Sandstone to know I’d gone to work for their big rival. They had many methods to make my life miserable. The expensive therapy could be canceled. The entire package I was offered was contingent on my not working for another company in the VR game field. Worse, they could demand money back from me. I couldn't afford to get sued.
What infuriated me was the way I knew information was lifted somehow from Sandstone to use in the Ruby Realizations game. I stood beneath a statue of Chamita, the wolf girl from the Sandstone game. How could they have found her image, other than inside the Sandstone VR system? I stood there and speculated about the VR team raiding my subconscious mind to pull her out. Given the level of mental interface Ruby used, it was just possible they’d found a way to bring her back out of my memories. It wouldn’t matter to the legal teams, however. The entire judicial branch would see this as a former employee who’d violated the terms of his contract. If they got me dead to rights I might be heading in for some jail time.
I stood there and said the only thing I could say to Rhonda. “Thank you for passing on the information,” I told her. “It’s good to know. Changes a whole lot when I get out of here.”
“Do you want the team to pull you out now?” she asked me. What happened to the jovial woman from the last scenario?
“No. I’ll need the money even more. If Sandstone tries to take me to court over this, I’ll have to hire lawyers and God knows what else. I’m staying.”
I reached over and cut the transmission.
CHAPTER TEN
I located the Nazi commandos an hour later.
What attracted me to them was the cigarette smell. I hate cigarettes, but this time in history peopl
e smoked them constantly. You would walk into a bar and get contact nicotine high from the after-effects of cigarette smoke. The entire southern agricultural system was based on tobacco. But I had never bothered to smoke, as no one in my family did it. So my sense of smell was attuned to the odors of cigarettes, which drifted through the ancient city to my nose.
And was it ever powerful. These German commandos fired up some powerful weed. The tobacco they smoked was unfiltered and unadulterated. This was the pure stuff that Hollywood stars belched out after they picked up their contacts on streets swathed in the shadows on the silver screen. All I had to do was follow my nose.
They had at least four pickets out covering all sides of the camp while the remainders stayed in the center and tried to contact their headquarters. The camp was on a lower stone platform and the commandos already had a fire burning. They appeared to be young recruits, eager to prove themselves to the Stormtrooper Overlords. I couldn’t tell what division they’d sent into this place, but I bet mental money it was an SS unit. I tried to see the division marks on their uniforms, but I couldn’t. In the distance, I could hear them talk back and forth in German.
The radio couldn’t get a thing, which didn’t surprise me. What surprised me is that the groups were functioning without the need for me to be around. If this game was based on my presence, how could I account for NPC’s who worked out their own operations when I wasn’t around to watch?
On the other hand, perhaps I was meant to find them plotting with Berlin. Once again, I was in a situation that involved a light being on inside the refrigerator. I’m certain Heisenberg would figure it all out, but I was stuck watching the divine dice roll, whether or not Einstein cared about them. I came to the conclusion it didn’t matter whether or not I had free will, I needed to reach a conclusion to this game. And the only way to do it right now was to find out if the German commandos had my courier box down there inside their camp.
