“You? Patient?”
“And your body isn’t as resilient,” he finished with great dignity. “All that stuff like crashing on your buddy’s floor for the night and being fine the next morning? It’s not a thing once you reach thirty. Of course, you stop caring about being all tough, too.”
“Yeah, that’s it. You stopped caring. You didn’t give up or anything.”
“Rude,” Ben told Prima and pretended not to notice the twins’ laughter. “Anyway, why did you ask?”
“I, uh…” Jamie shrugged. “No reason.”
“You don’t lie very well. Don’t go into politics.”
The boy said nothing for a long time. He practically inhaled two loaded potatoes while Ben waited.
Finally, he ran out of patience. “You don’t have to worry about being insulting.”
“Oh.” Jamie looked relieved. “Okay, then.”
“This should be good.”
“I guess I wondered—I mean, I always thought grown-ups knew what to do, you know? Like there was…” he trailed off.
“Oh.” Ben nodded sagely. “Yeah, sorry to tell you, but there’s no manual. Not only do you keep being as confused, but your problems also tend to get more complicated.”
The boy stared at him like a deer in headlights. “Great,” he managed finally.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Most of the time, you get used to it. Then you’re doing something like feeding a polar bear and you start wondering, ‘why the hell did I think this was a good idea?’ But it always passes eventually.”
“Sure.” Jamie sighed. “I guess that’s true. You didn’t always know what to do but you seemed confident in your ability to choose.”
Ben started laughing and could not stop. He laughed so hard that it took him a while to realize Prima was also laughing. She had mimicked the cadence of human laughter—but, of course, did not need to stop in order to breathe. That gave her far more staying power.
When he looked up, it was to find both twins staring at him in confusion.
“Sorry,” he managed. “It’s, uh…you didn’t see me in Heffog. Or in the fae lands. In Heffog, I started a civil war by failing to think at all. And in the fae lands, I couldn’t get off my ass to do anything. Sometimes you do well, sometimes you don’t.”
“Huh.” Jamie chewed meditatively.
“So…” Taigan frowned. “I don’t get it. You get older and you learn how to be the person you want to be, right?”
“Yeah,” he said but wondered where this was going.
“Well then, why wouldn’t you simply be that person?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” her brother agreed.
“Oh,” Ben said. “Oh, that is so precious. Oh, you two.” He shook his head. “You know, I think I’ll let you two work this one out yourselves, okay?”
“No,” Jamie said and looked panicked. “No, no, we need help.”
“A ton of help,” Taigan agreed. “Him, not me. I’m merely curious.” She grinned at Jamie, already anticipating the insult he had decided to give with a single raised eyebrow instead of words.
“Discovering all those answers is one of the parts of being an adult,” he said. “And now, because even saying that sentence made me feel eighty years old, let’s talk about something else. What will you two do after I head out?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said, after a moment. She looked at her brother.
Above the fire, something shimmered and opened into a vision of clear blue sky over mountain peaks. In the air, a golden key glittered.
“This is what you need to find,” Prima said. “It will open the door back to your home.”
“Huh.” Taigan narrowed her eyes at it. “Where is it?”
“Finding it is part of the experience.”
“I’m beginning to think adults say that when they don’t know how to answer a question,” the girl muttered.
Ben looked hastily at his food before she could see from his expression that she’d hit pay-dirt with her guess.
“You’re not going to tell them?” Prima asked. “That’s cruel.”
He pointed to his full mouth and shrugged as he chewed.
“Coward.”
Resigned, he simply nodded.
“You know, one of the worst things about humans is that you decide to accept a bad trait, and then it’s impossible to talk you out of it because there’s no leverage.”
Ben snorted softly.
“What are you doing after this?” Jamie asked him.
“Uh…” He sighed. “Finding a job, finding an apartment, and moving everything.”
“You don’t have a job?”
“I was between things when I had the climbing accident. Now, I need to decide what to do.” He sighed. “I hate this part—all the paperwork and all the little details. Getting all the boxes out of storage, getting the moving van, settling into the apartment…realizing you don’t have any toilet paper…”
“And, uh…no girlfriend or anything?”
Much to his embarrassment, Ben blushed.
“You do!” Jamie said. “Wait, how do you have one and you don’t have an apartment?”
“It’s, uh…” He cleared his throat and tried to stop blushing, which only backfired. “She was one of the doctors who took care of me after the accident. We’ve seen each other a couple of times since then and she’s staying at that hospital now that her internship is over.”
“Awwww,” the twins said in unison.
“Yeah, yeah.” Ben took a bite of hotdog, but he was smiling. “It’ll be good to see her again. Except I don’t have all my coordination back in the real world yet, so I wind up doing things like throwing food at my face instead of putting it in my mouth.”
“So, no soup,” Taigan said.
“Definitely no soup,” he agreed. “And what about you two? Are you in college already, or…”
“Nope.” She sighed. “Well, Jamie might be applying. I might have missed the window.”
“Or your older sister might have written you an application essay,” her brother said. “Just possibly.”
“Or that. Isn’t that, I don’t know…” She swayed uncomfortably. “Lying? What’s the word—”
“Unethical,” Ben supplied.
“That’s the one.”
“It honestly sounded like you,” Jamie said as if that solved everything. “I helped. Using all the stuff you’d said about what you wanted in a college, we chose some and sent your scores and everything. Mom and Dad were already filling out the paperwork for the financial aid stuff, so it made sense.”
“They were in on it?”
“Well, no.” He cleared his throat. “We told them you’d already gotten your application stuff done in case something like this happened, right, so…” He shrugged when she looked at him. “I don’t know! I didn’t think you’d want to miss a year of college.”
“No, it was sweet, I appreciate it.” Taigan came to sit with him. “So, where’d I apply?”
“Michigan State, Berkeley…” He waved his hands. “A few.”
She smiled and shrugged at Ben. “So I guess maybe I’m conning my way into college with my brother. To answer your question, you know.”
“Uh-huh.” He smiled. “You two want to go to college together, then? Not sick of each other yet?”
“Nope,” both said at once.
“I think maybe it’s different because we’re not identical,” Taigan said after she’d thought about it. “We didn’t get compared to each other more than we got compared to Emmy or anything, and it wasn’t like we competed for guys or girls or anything.”
Ben nodded.
“Do you have any siblings?” Jamie asked him.
“An older sister.” He shrugged. “She has a nice, stable, suburban life. Minivan. Two kids. White picket fence. You know, my nightmare. She’s nice, though. We don’t talk much but we get along when we see each other. She never gets on my case about settling down.”
Long sticks ap
peared for the marshmallow roasting and the group wiped their hands before they started dessert. Steaming mugs of tea appeared before long, and stories were traded of awful road trips, summer camp embarrassments, and best and worst teachers.
Eventually, the twins fell asleep, curled under blankets that had appeared out of thin air. Ben smiled at them as he drank his tea.
“You don’t seem worried about leaving,” Prima said.
“I’m not too worried.” He kept his voice low. “I’ve never done the whole working in an office and having to choose an apartment thing. I’m merely not as scared anymore. I think maybe the reason I never wanted to settle down was that I always knew there was a fight coming down the line. Sooner or later, I’d get angry at someone, we’d yell at each other…”
She made no response.
“Now I know you can pick up and keep going after that,” he said quietly. “I wish I’d learned that sooner.”
“If you had, would you have met Eliza?”
“Good point.” He smiled. “What about you? What will you be doing?”
“Watching out for the berserker twins over there.”
Ben grinned. “And you’re…I don’t know how to say this. You’re happy?”
“Yes. I get to learn about people. You’re fascinating, all of you. Very strange, of course, but fascinating. I’m glad…that you’re leaving.”
“Uh…”
“Oh. Sorry. I mean, I’m glad that you’re leaving because you’re better, not because you’re dying. One of the last people I worked with, she died. She knew she had cancer, so she decided to come to help the game by being a tester. I miss her.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, oddly touched. “I…how does it feel to not have her around anymore?”
“It hurts,” Prima said honestly. “I think. I’m not sure what ‘hurts’ feels like. But I don’t like it. I wish she were still here and she isn’t, and instead of simply knowing that, I keep thinking it would be nice if she were here. It doesn’t make any sense. She can’t be here, she’s dead. But I keep thinking about it.”
“That’s how it goes,” he agreed quietly. “It’s part of being…alive, I guess. The thoughts start getting further apart over time.”
“I don’t want to forget her.”
“You won’t,” he assured her. “And I’ll make sure to come back so you can’t forget me either.”
“Good,” Prima said. “I wouldn’t want you to get a big head out there on your own.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“They honestly told you to do this?” Ben asked Jacob. He lined his shot up and whacked the tiny green golf ball across the floor.
“They didn’t tell us not to do it,” the man said after a pause.
Another interminable barrage of tests had awaited him, after which he had been told he had one more to complete—only to find out that the team had set up a massive miniature golf course in the lab. Completing the theme of a day at the carnival, there was also funnel cake and a game along one wall with beanbags to throw.
He watched his ball roll down the slope, pick up too much speed, and miss the hole.
“Better luck next time.” Jacob clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’ve always sucked at golf.” He tapped his chin. “So maybe that means everything is back to normal.”
“I’d believe you if you hadn’t accidentally thrown a golf club at Nick.”
“I also did that once before the accident.” He grinned. “I was astonishingly drunk at the time, of course.”
“Somehow, I don’t think we’ll get clearance from the physicians to pump you full of alcohol on top of all the other drugs in your system right now.” The engineer putted carefully and made a face when his ball missed the hole by a fraction of an inch.
The next shot went in perfectly, and the two men looked up to see Anna Price watching them. She smiled and hefted a golf club. “I hope I can join in.”
“Of course.” Jacob nodded. He darted Ben a wide-eyed look. It seemed he had not anticipated that the CEO would come downstairs while no one was working.
“So,” Price said to Ben as she waited for his next shot. “I hear you’re planning to head to Colorado.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did a video interview this morning for a job. I’m not sure when I’ll hear about it.”
“Soon, I think, given that they called me for a reference right after your interview.” She smiled at him.
“You…gave me a reference?” He hadn’t expected that, especially since this job was probably the complete opposite of those she had found for him. They had been with the military and subcontractors and this was with a small non-profit that had an environmental focus.
“Yes.” Price made another impeccable shot. “Having seen you under a great deal of stress, I can speak well to your ability to overcome obstacles, problem-solve, and do all the…hmm, boring parts of recovery work.”
Ben swallowed. She still frightened him in many ways, but her kindness was evident. “I appreciate that,” he said.
He had decided not to ask how she knew where he had applied or how she had been included as a reference.
“Of course.” She finished the course and looked to where the two men were no closer to a resolution.
“You move on,” Jacob said. “If you wait for us, you’ll be here all day.” When she had headed off to the next hole with a laugh and a goodbye handshake for Ben, he said in an undertone, “She truly does look out for her people.”
“She does,” he agreed. “Okay, I’ll get it this time. It’s what? Four inches?” He lined his shot up, only to whack the ball far harder than he had meant to. “Godammit. How am I supposed to move into an apartment if I can’t even hit a golf ball reliably?”
“This is why there are professional movers,” Amber pointed out.
“I have no job and no money.”
“Hmm. Sleep on the floor?” She shook her head. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we can get something into the budget for—”
“You’ve done enough,” Ben said firmly. “I’m not bankrupted by medical bills and I can walk again. If I use pizza and beer, I should be able to get Mike and Natasha to help. Of course, he eats enough pizza that maybe it’s cheaper to have the movers.”
She laughed, watched as Jacob got his shot in, and did a victory dance.
“Fine, fine,” he said grumpily. “Everyone can move on. I’ll continue to struggle over here.”
“Now seems like a good time for a funnel cake break,” Amber told him. “Remember, your muscles tire far more quickly in the real world.”
He realized his arms were, in fact, shaking. It took effort but he managed to get to the cake station and sit by himself, even if he did wind up in a different chair than the one he had aimed for. He gave up on dignity enough to lower his face to the plate of funnel cake like it was a pie-eating contest.
It was unquestionably good Eliza wasn’t there for this.
Even thinking about her made his heart race slightly, and when he looked up, it was to see Nick smiling at him. The other man handed him a napkin and he nodded a thank you, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t garbled nonsense about Eliza.
“Taigan and Jamie are doing well,” he said finally. “Whatever you were worried about, I think they’re okay.”
“Good,” the man said. He seemed a little thrown by the choice of topic. “That’s—well, it’s good. We’re starting to see some changes in brainwaves, so…hopefully she’ll move closer to waking up.”
“Prima has her looking for a key,” he told him.
Nick choked on his funnel cake, looked around, and shook his head quickly. “Don’t discuss that,” he said in a low voice. “Price knows, and the three of us, and DuBois…and a few of the people who have been in the world. But we don’t talk about it.”
“Oh,” Ben said, feeling a little lost. “Er, sorry.” No one seemed to pay attention to them, however, so he added: “Knows about what, exactly?”
�
�That she’s…you know.” The man gestured to his head to indicate thinking.
“Oh. Oh. Price knows?”
“She knows everything,” Nick said in dire tones. “Everything. About everyone. I think she may somehow hook into surveillance grids like a robot.” A long pause followed. “Maybe she’s Prima.”
“Well, that’s terrifying.”
“Let’s never speak of this again.”
“Never.”
“I heard that,” Amber said. She sat on the couch nearby and raised an eyebrow, her fork and funnel cake at the ready. “And I’ve wondered the same. It would explain how she never seems to get tired.”
“That could also be cocaine,” Nick pointed out.
“Now, there’s a mental image.” She grinned.
“Prima, meanwhile, is probably very annoyed at being compared to a human,” Ben said. He wiggled his eyebrows at one of the pods and stuck his tongue out. “Better or worse than being compared to a demon, Prima?”
The printer behind him whirred to life and made him jump, and all three of them craned to look as a single page printed out.
Asshole
The next morning dawned crisp and fair with sunlight that woke Ben gently. He yawned and stretched—or, more accurately, yawned and flailed his arms wildly. There were some things, he realized now, that the game had never quite managed to capture and one of them was the way muscles felt when you first woke up in the morning.
Or the crisp feel of sheets.
On the other hand, in the game world, you never woke up needing to pee.
He had a leisurely morning ahead of him. Ever mindful of the details, the PIVOT team had arranged a flight that allowed for delays at every step, from taking eight attempts to turn the shower on to shuffling through the airport at the pace of a diseased sloth.
A short while later, he munched on his breakfast—there was a buffet downstairs, but he was still more comfortable eating alone where no one could see him—and checked his phone to see that time zones notwithstanding, Eliza had been awake before he was.
He responded to her text, a continuation of their days-long debate about whether Darth Maul or The Mountain would win in a fight, and saw her symbol switch to a green dot. She was online.
Grasping The Future Page 18
