Backward Compatible: A Geek Love Story

by Sarah Daltry

  The nine of us begin to drift in various directions, cataloging the options. I try to see if any stand out. There’s a multitude of impressive looking weapons of different colors and sizes.

  “Hey, here’s some kind of giant metal penis,” Clovis shouts.

  “That’s a spear,” Lanyon tells him. “But the heart sees what it wants.”

  Chaos slips in on little drizzles of madness. We’re occasionally interrupted by a wandering monster, but they’re all weak. Simply meant as a distraction. This is the first challenge; I can feel it. Will we be intelligent enough to choose properly? Or did we waste all that time hunting for keys for nothing? This is also my chance to show Katie that I’m smart. Not just some random smartass. Think, I tell myself. I pick up my bard strut and motor up and down the aisles of weapons.

  “Hey, I think I actually found a shoelace,” Chad says.

  “Not sure that’s a shoelace,” says Katie.

  “It looks like a string. You know, for a violin or something,” Lanyon offers.

  “Or a lute,” Trevor says. “It’s probably a string for the bard’s lute.”

  “Could be.” I bard my ass over to the string. Before we do anything, I open up my menu and study the 3D image of my lute. I’m focused mainly on the length, color, and thickness of the string.

  “Get a good look, you guys,” I tell Katie, Lanyon, and Chad, who can see my menu on the screen. “I want to compare them.”

  “Looks about right.” Chad shrugs. “I think.” Then he shouts, “Where are those sandwiches?”

  “Dude,” Lanyon interrupts. “It’s like two in the morning. One does not simply shout about sandwiches at this time.”

  “Right, my bad. I could use a sandwich, though.”

  Chad’s confidence aside, I’m still not sure. I drop my menu and we all stare at the string like idiots, our eyes squinted, until the girls walk in.

  “Huzzah for the sandwich maidens,” declares Lanyon.

  “Shut up,” Heather says as she beans him in the face with what appears to be tuna and cheese on a pita.

  “I don’t think it looks right,” I say.

  “What’s it for?” Heather asks.

  “We’re trying to decide if this string is for my lute,” I explain.

  “That one?” She looks and considers. “No. That isn’t sheep gut. And it’s too long for a lute.” We all turn to look at her. “What? I know more than just how to make sandwiches.”

  “Good enough for me,” I say. “It didn’t feel right.”

  “Yo azz almost chose poorly, sucka.” I sigh. Trevor is a hopeless bastard.

  The Great Sandwich Consumption of 2013 begins in earnest. It’s a very important time. While we chomp away, we continue our search of the area. Suddenly, I see what appears to be a simple sheet of paper. “Music,” I announce. Lanyon and Chad both break out into song. Different songs. So terrible are both renditions that the tunes themselves cannot be identified.

  “Shut up,” Katie yells over them. “What do you mean?” she asks me.

  “This paper on the pedestal here. It looks like sheet music.”

  “Awesome,” Ally says. I’d forgotten all about her since she’s been so quiet. That girl is all business. Typical paladin. “Can you guys read music?”

  “Can we read music?” Lanyon chuckles. “Two words for you, my dear: triangle protégé.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Ally says.

  “Yes,” I answer her. “We can read it.” I look about the room. “Moment of truth?”

  My bard reaches out and grabs the sheet of music. I hold my breath but I don’t explode.

  “So far, so good,” Seynar says.

  I stare at the music and, as it turns out, I don’t have to know how to read it; the character does it for me. He starts plucking away on his lute immediately. After a moment, the song is done, and then there is silence.

  “Did that seem anticlimactic to anyone else?” Katie asks. However, as she says it, the earth shakes, our controllers rumble, Chad drops his sandwich, and the screen explodes with shards of rock and light.

  “Listen well, travelers,” booms a voice from out of nowhere.

  “Oh, come on,” whines Lanyon. “No subtitles?”

  “Quiet,” Seynar hisses. “It said listen well.”

  The voice continues. “You have done admirably and uncovered that which you will need to defeat Apocmandur. Yet your mission will not be easy. You will soon enter a hidden realm that goes beyond the game itself. Here, if you fall, ye shall never return.”

  “Balls,” says Balin, who, for some reason, is apparently still with us.

  “Your journey is an arduous one,” the disembodied voice continues. “It shall begin when you nine wish it.” The screen goes full black and our nine character names appear in a list on the screen. “Play the music and so shall you be teleported to the elder realm. There you will have the chance for victory or death. Choose your time wisely.”

  The autosave flashes, but all of the doors to the room are sealed. We can only go forward; the question is whether now is the right time. We could shut off the system, get some rest, research and prepare for the battle. Or we could go in and hope we make it. It’s a one shot deal.

  “So what are we waiting for?” Katie asks.

  “Not now,” says Anna. “I am bored as hell.”

  “Well, there is one thing that must be done ere we continue on our most glorious quest.” Lanyon stands and favors us all with a look of deep severity. “Ladies and gentlemen, I must pee.”

  Katie

  While Lanyon’s gone, we put on a show of debating, although really it’s just so Anna won’t stop having sex with Chad for good. We bought cases of Dew, three bags of candy, and four boxes of those Push Up ice cream things that used to have The Flintstones on them. Clearly, we are not planning on going anywhere except to the elder realm.

  Lanyon comes back, inhales the rest of his tuna pita, and then leans in to kiss Heather. The weird thing is that she not only lets him, but she even goes full on grabby with him as well. Chad coughs a couple times and then throws one of George’s shoes at them. That stops them. The whole time, George just stares straight ahead. I discreetly check my breath in my hand, but I can’t smell anything and it just leads to Anna shaking her head at me. How did I manage to find the one guy on Earth with less game than me? And I basically have an old checkers board with only eight pieces.

  “To the elder realm!” Lanyon shouts, pointing his finger in the air. Heather and Anna settle back on the bed, Heather with her DS and Anna with her phone.

  “How can you possibly have anything to do on your phone?” I ask her.

  “There’s a new Angry Birds,” she says.

  “You’re lucky you’re hot,” mumbles Chad.

  George begins to play his lute and the roof over us disappears. We’re looking up into a vortex of stars and swirling galaxies. The disembodied voice returns, but it isn’t saying words in English, just a lot of chanting. Suddenly, the entire room is sucked into the vortex and, after a quick flash, we’re standing in the middle of a giant field. On a giant cliff. I step closer to the middle of the group because there is nothing worse than dying because you fell off a cliff.

  “So now what?” Ally asks.

  Seynar says something, probably about checking online, but it’s drowned out as the ground around us shatters and we are soon face to face with the monster we fought earlier, now in the center of what can only be called a bowl. A big bowl that looks a little like the Coliseum. If you could eat cereal out of the Coliseum.

  “You think we can just shake hands, ask this big ass goat looking monster thing for ten grand and a ticket to Montreal, and be on our way?” Lanyon ponders.

  “I don’t think so, but we have got to plan this. Operation Save Danger is underway,” George says.

  “Danger?” I ask.

  “He’s a white mage. So the goal here, other than to beat this big goat bastard, is to keep the white mage a
live. Me, Lanyon, and Trevor are on Danger.”

  “Aw yeah, man, I’m on Danger like a bitch in heat.”

  “Muted,” George says. Which is probably kind of dumb, except, really, who cares if Trevor and the Hymen Shatterer survive? They were only invited to carry a key.

  “Now, Ally, Chad, and Seynar, you guys are on offense. You need a plan, though. Don’t just go in shooting,” he continues. “And, Katie, can you go back and forth on magic?”

  I nod. “What about Clovis?” I realize all we know is that he has a flute.

  “Damn it,” Chad says, and we unmute Trevor and Clovis. “Hey, Clovis, what class are you playing?”

  “Scholar,” he says.

  “I love irony,” comments George. “Okay, then, Clovis, why don’t you write a book about the battle?”

  “Why don’t you make sweet love to your mom, asshole?”

  We don’t even bother with muting this time. It’s a real shame. For all of the wonders of the Xbox and Live, there is always some moronic tween you have to mute. Eventually, you just have to accept that the entire world is not mutable.

  We start out like a team. A real productive team with a plan. I go back and forth, offering buffs and spells to assist George and the defensive party, and then providing bursts of elemental magic while Seynar reloads, Chad preps his big spells, and Ally runs back to a place of safety after getting a hit in. The health bar doesn’t go down, per se, but it looks a little less red. Like maybe it’s considering going down. Someday. Eventually.

  And then, just as I think I see a small flicker at the end of Apocmandur’s health gauge, we have our first casualty. Surprisingly, it isn’t Trevor or Clovis. I don’t know where Clovis even is, but his name is still listed as active in the party. As Chad sends down his biggest spell, fire and lightning rain from the sky. Apocmandur rears up on its hind legs and, for a moment, he flashes and 11213 HP is zapped off of him. However, the victory is short-lived, because when Apocmandur comes back to the ground, he stomps twice and the earth shakes. Chad, who was once standing by a rock to my left, is no more.

  “Fuck me,” he says.

  “Sure,” Anna replies without even looking up from her phone.

  Chad, apparently okay with the exchange of sex for death, shrugs and gets onto George’s bed with Anna. They starts kissing really loudly, but Lanyon just leans over and turns up the TV a little. Right now, there could be babies being made, but I have one goal only. To take down this goaty bitch.

  George

  “The problem with monsters who look like goats is that they are adorable,” Lanyon says, as a wave of goat acid burns off half his health.

  “You think goats are cute?” asks Ally.

  “Cute and sexy like a big titted hamster.” Lanyon snorts with glee as Danger heals him from afar.

  “So this guy interests you, huh?” Chad asks Heather in the brief moment while his tongue is not Helm’s deep in Anna’s throat.

  “Of course,” Heather says as she jumps on Lanyon. “I’d bang a goat or a hamster. Ooh, a goatster.”

  Lanyon, in the throes of joy at having a female jump on him, allows his Halfling to wander into the corner. Lucky for him, Apocmandur is busy trying to goat fuck the rest of us to death. A quill whips through the sky and catches Apocmandur in the eye.

  “Reading is FUN-damental,” Clovis shouts.

  “The quill is mightier than the sword,” Ally adds.

  The words “Hellfire Lobotomy” flash across the screen as Apocmandur rises up and a torrent of seething red death rages at us. In the few seconds before it strikes, a number of comments echo across consoles.

  “We are fucked.”

  “This is bad.”

  “What’s a lobotomy?”

  “I stopped looking at porn for this?”

  “Put down your sandwich.”

  “Did you guys win?”

  “Play the fucking lute!”

  But amidst all the noise and our apparent inevitable doom, one among us steps forward to save the day. “Shield of Aegis,” Danger yells. He doesn’t have to yell it, as the game is not voice activated, but it does add a certain touch of drama. As the hellfire surges forward, a white wall of magic rises up and covers us all. The magic shell quakes and starts to melt, but it holds long enough for the hellfire to evaporate.

  “Holy shit on a dolphin’s nipple. Danger saved us,” Lanyon says.

  “Yes, I did,” Danger proudly confirms. Those words are his last, however, as Apocmandur, no doubt peeved that his massive area attack failed, puts a hoof through Danger’s torso. “Shit. I used up all my magic on the damn shield.”

  “Balls. The white mage is dead. We’re buggered. Retreat,” Ally commands.

  “There is no retreat. Retreat is for the weak. There is no weakness; there is no mercy. We are Cobra Kai.” Then, as the proud statement leaves his mouth, Trevor, too, is hooved. “Dag. Mutha fuck goat straight up killed my ass.” There is just no hope for that dude.

  “Are you deaf, George?” Seynar yells at me.

  “Yes, I’m fucking deaf,” I respond.

  “Put the candle back,” Lanyon shouts as he returns to the fray.

  “Play your lute, jackass. We didn’t get that music sheet for nothing. What does it say about it in your inventory?” Seynar’s losing his composure. With our white mage dead and this goat whore seemingly unbeatable, I can’t say I blame him.

  I check my menu. The music sheet is there. Its description reads: Super awesome sheet music. You have chosen wisely; this goes to eleven.

  “Hmmm, convoluted,” I say.

  “Does it say use or anything?” Katie asks.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, what does it say? That goat is going to fuck you up.” Chad’s begun to ignore his rapidly de-clothing girlfriend. FDX has a powerful pull indeed.

  “It says, quite simply, ‘unleash that shit,’” I tell them.

  “Then unleash that shit,” everyone yells at once. I think I may have even heard my dad’s voice mixed in. I click the music sheet and my sexy bard breaks into an animation that involves lots of lute playing and some uncomfortable looking goat-eroticism from Apocmandur. When the animation ends, the sky and the bowl ripple with color and Apocmandur spins and flashes, like an old school boss in the throes of death.

  “Is it dying?” Katie asks.

  “Not sure. It might just be getting angry,” Lanyon says. “We wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.”

  “I don’t like him now,” I say. “Shoot the bastard.”

  We begin a steady attack in earnest and, much to my and presumably everyone else’s surprise, the health bar actually begins to decrease. Not superfast, but at a reasonable rate.

  “We’re hurting it. Suck on my inky vengeance,” shouts Clovis, the unconfirmed shatterer of hymen.

  “Great, but it’s got a long way to go and the white mage is dead. Keep up the assault,” Seynar shouts.

  “Really?” Lanyon asks. “We should ‘keep up the assault?’ You mean it isn’t time to just hang out and tell jokes about awkward shaped breasts and hairy English men?”

  “Witty retort. Now, fight,” Katie tells him.

  “Hey,” a deep thunderous voice echoes from downstairs. “Where’s the bread?”

  Lanyon grabs my arm and whispers, “The horror, the horror.”

  Katie

  Just as Apocmandur’s health bar starts to drain, there is a loud rumbling that comes not from the Xbox but instead, from the stairway near George’s room. Suddenly, his bedroom door flies open. Anna pulls the blanket over her awkwardly naked torso – she was seriously about to have sex with the rest of us still here? Including her boyfriend’s sister? – but George’s father has the single-minded focus of Ada Wong.

  “Where is the bread?” he demands.

  George jumps back from a bolt of something shot out of Apocmandur’s hoof. “Busy right now, Dad. Can’t talk.”

  His dad, not deterred, walks over the TV, picks up the remote, and tu
rns it off.

  “Mother of all that is holy!” Lanyon cries and scrambles for the remote.

  “What’s going on?” Ally asks.

  “We’re having a bit of a crisis,” I explain.

  “The crisis can wait. We are about to be anally violated by a goat,” Seynar says.

  “Sounds like every Saturday for you,” comments Lanyon.

  George hands me his controller and I try to play bard and druid simultaneously while he leads his father into the hallway and talks him down from his bread withdrawals.

  “That dude loves sandwiches,” Chad says.

  “No,” Lanyon explains. “He loves things that are easy.”

  “Like your mom,” Trevor jumps in.

  “My mom is your mom, you fucking nozzle of douche.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Bread crisis resolved, George comes back in. “I have to go to the store at six am. As soon as it opens. For bread.”

  “We’ll probably all be dead by then anyway,” I tell him, although it isn’t much comfort to any of us.

  “Okay, bitches, that gives us a little less than two hours to slaughter this fucker,” Lanyon says.

  “Done,” says Ally, and she charges forward, her attack buffed thanks to George’s lute. She takes off a huge chunk of HP, but barely makes it out alive. “Can anyone heal me?”

  “I can try,” I say. My druid healing powers, however, are weak, and barely get her over 25 percent. Clovis tosses her a potion he made, but she’s screwed. She might have one more big attack left, and that’s only if we can keep her away from the boss for a bit.

  “Hey, Danger,” George suggests. “Can you go online and see what they recommend?”

  A voice comes over the mic, a voice we had nearly forgotten. “You guys need to team up,” Balin says.

  “What are you still doing here?” Lanyon asks.

  “Eh, I have nothing else to do. Plus I did bring you the key and tell you about this shit, so you know, I should probably get a portion of the winnings.”